


Until It's Gone

by AshaCrone



Series: For Family [2]
Category: Doom (2005), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, Gore, M/M, Pre-Slash, one off domestic violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:29:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshaCrone/pseuds/AshaCrone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History is always more complicated than the records tell, and Reaper had seen a lot of history. Yet when he had gone into space, he had never expected one of his many demons to come back in the form of Khan Noonien Singh. </p><p>And Khan still remembers who forced him from Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Star Trek Into Darkness belongs to Paramount and its creators, not me, and I make no money from this work of fanfiction at all. 

 

Being friends with James T. Kirk was often a pain in the ass.

As Doctor Leonard 'Bones' McCoy reached back to pull the throwing spear from his backside, he wished for a less literal metaphor. 

They were on a simple survey mission (and didn't they all start out that way?) when the planetary geologists had discovered the super volcano. It was massive, building towards an eruption that could destroy the fragile ecosystem of the planet Nibiru... including its burgeoning sapient species. 

McCoy had wondered, often, what would cause an alien species to interfere with the development of a younger one. There could be any number of reasons, but the spirit of the Prime Directive said helping was basically a no-go. There had been rounds and rounds of arguing, and McCoy had done what he did best: tell Jim and Spock that screw the rules. Do what was right. An entire world, with its unique biodiversity and _people_ shouldn't die when they had the power to help.

He had first tried to use a native riding beast, even if the creature looked like a cross between an elephant, a bear and sloth with a food processor for a mouth, it was gentle and really did _not_ deserve to have Jim stun the hell out of it. That was why he and that damn fool kid were running like chickens with their heads cut off towards the cliff while the natives hollered and howled and threw chert-tipped sticks at them. Jim was running, and Len let him stay two steps ahead to block the lucky shots- like the one gouging his ass and _hell_ the damn thing was barbed and lodged- from getting his best fucking friend in the universe.

Jim tripped, and Len dived between him and the hunters, grunting as a stone point stuck in his ribs. He fell to his knees, blinking to remove the film of pain from his eyes.

"Bones! You got hit?" 

Len shook his head frantically as Jim stopped, getting to his feet and yanking the new stick out of his side with one hand while Jim whipped open the scroll he was carrying and draped it over a tree.

Around them, most of native Nibirians dropped to the ground in homage before the scroll... but a few did not. Len cursed, shoving his Captain forward.

"They're trying to kill us, Jim!" He yelled , feeling the muscle and skin heal almost instantly, grateful he wouldn't have even more chunks to cut out later. Goddamn it. They had to keep moving.

They had to keep running, running, launch themselves off the damn cliff.

"I hate this!"

 _~*~*~*~*~_  
He liked being Bones. 

That didn't mean he liked limping back to Med Bay, into his office, and using a precision scalpel and a mirror to remove the offending sliver of rock that had his muscles growing around it. He was glad that Jim's attention had been on Spock's melodramatic refusal to be rescued and ignored the puncture holes over Bone's backside and ribs. The skin underneath had healed, and so had the surrounding tissue (and he doubted the projectile point would go septic but it hurt like hell) but the positioning of both made it painfully obvious that he hadn't just been grazed.

Being Bones meant certain responsibilities, though, and he knew he had reports to write, sign off on, and post-mission check-ups to inflict... as soon as he removed the newest pain from his ass. The sting was brief, and using anything to dull it would have been a waste of good medicine; he hadn't run into anything that worked on him yet. The tingling rush of almost-pain of healing came and went, and left behind a piece of blood covered, razor sharp stone and a ravenously hungry stomach.

He showered and changed into his duty uniform, calling the away team to the Med Bay and putting up with their whining about being tired. _He_ was perfectly fine, if a bit distracted by the thought of food, but that could wait until he knew the kids were all okay. 

That included Spock, Jim, Uhura and Sulu. 

They came in as a group, and Len mustered his staff, got them deployed and had them scanning the others for injuries, for any stray bacteria that may have gotten in through regular decontamination. From what he could tell just from their readouts, they were all still overloaded from the mission. Well, Spock, not so much. The hobgoblin could control his automatic systems almost perfectly... but he couldn't seem to meet the eyes of anyone in the room.

Uhura's blood pressure had spiked and he didn't need any fancy equipment to hear her heart thundering, or see the wet gleam in her eyes, or the flush of rage on her face. Bones could smell the relief coming off Jim in waves, overcoming the stench of worry and fear.

Sulu was just exhausted, pure and simple. He didn't fight under the hands of his nurses, didn't try to keep talking, just allowed himself to relax. At least he wasn't-

"So, which of these lucky ladies gets to give you her attention, Bones?" Jim chirped as Len clamped one large hand on his shoulder to keep him from darting off. 

"What the hell are you talking about?" he answered, absently. His stomach was starting to reach towards his spine to complain; healing from any kind of injury left him _famished_. He was thinking about meat; steak or fried chicken, paired with something sour and salty... With some beer. Definitely a beer night. Maybe see if Jim was up for a nightcap later-

"Come on, to fix that lucky shot you took earlier!" Jim's face was flushed with an almost drugged high- endorphins and adrenaline from their latest brush with death, combined with exhaustion from their run and swim- and his mouth was running faster than his mind. His eyes were feverishly bright. "You wouldn't deprive us of seeing _you_ get poked and prodded, right?"

Len felt the eyes of everyone in the Med Bay on him, looking at him with a mix of concern and schadenfreude. "Already taken care of, kid. Nice thing about being CMO- I can fix my own boo-boos."

"Ah, you mean you can kiss your own ass?" Jim didn't know when to shut up. 

"You didn't report any injuries to us, Doctor," Doctor M'Benga said, mildly. "That's a breach of protocol." And Bones would have stripped the hide, verbally speaking, off anyone else who did that. Everyone in that room knew it.

"Fine. M'Benga, while running for my life from angry natives after Captain Kirk stunned Pookie, I was scratched by a spear before jumping off a cliff." Len rolled his eyes. "I decontaminated and cleaned the wound, and then fixed it with a dermal regenerator in my office. If you want more evidence than that, you'll have to get me drunk first."

There were chuckles all around as he cleared his the away team for a night's sleep and a good meal. Speaking of a good meal-

He was on his way out of Med Bay, headed towards the mess, when he ran into Jim. Jim, who was waiting outside his door.

"You sure you're okay, Bones?" The Captain looked him up and down. "Because- I admit, I didn't get a good look- I seem to recall a lot of blood on that pig-sticker. And not the one that got your ass." Concern creased Jim's face as the adrenaline faded to leave him calm, reminding Len that Jim was, indeed, a genius. 

"We were running through a red forest. Everything looked like it was bled on," Len answered, crossing his arms defensively. He resisted the urge to pat himself down. He felt fine- he always did- and Jim rubbed his chin. "If I had been hurt, I would have told you." He looked at his friend, a faint smile on his face. "Besides, better my ass than yours, right?"

The concern on Jim's face was faded to mix with puzzlement, then a shrug and a slap to the shoulder. "You're the doctor. What you eating?"

To be continued...


	2. Chapter Two

She would always be his little girl.

" _Dad!_ "

"Jo," John whispered back to her as he walked in the door. Then he inhaled, closing his eyes as he took in her scent: tears and salt and grief. 

Always his little girl, with her coal-black hair in lumpy pigtails, scabby knees, stained shirt and a soldier's mouth. Always and forever. Except that she wasn't.

All around them were the sounds of grief, of mourning, and the hideous inanity that came with people discussing the mundane when the world was ending. "I'm here, sweet pea," he went on, watching her face, noting the gray in her hair, the fact that her face was absolutely dry despite the torn handkerchief in her hands. They were surrounded by family, but his little girl was all by herself because she had to be the strong one. She couldn't let them see her crack, or mourn, because her job was to hold her family together no matter what it cost her.

He couldn't be having with that.

"Come here," he said, gesturing towards the basement. "We can talk for awhile."

Jo nodded, and John opened the door and followed her inside, listening to her sniff and snuffle down the concrete stairs. They arrived in what was ostensibly a spare room; it was more or less his private cave and bedroom whenever he managed to come for a visit to the old homestead. 

Joanna turned to her father, who held out his arms and she cracked; her fists slammed into his chest hard enough to break ribs but he healed almost as soon as they fractured.

"I hate you," she tried to say, but it was mixed with choked sobs. "I hate you. God, I hate you so much right now-"

"I know. I know, baby girl. I wish I could have spared you this," he said, wheezing as one of the breaks punctured a lung. He coughed as blood flooded upwards and out his mouth; he spat on the floor. "I'm sorry."

Joanna collapsed to her knees, covering her face with her hands. "God. What have you done? What have I- I cursed my own babies-"

John sat down on the floor and drew her into his lap, wrapping around her as she buried her face his shoulder. "Shhh. You didn't hurt anybody." He rocked her, back and forth, fingers dragging through her black hair... noticing that the gray was nowhere near her roots. "You loved Mark. You didn't do anything wrong."

She hid her face against him, and he let her vent, curse, cry, claw. "How? How can you do this, over and over again-"

"You just do. However best you can." He kept petting. "If I could take this off you, I would-"

"I know." She hiccupped, laughed weakly. "Now, _now_ I understand. God, Dad, when do I have to do this- to _leave_ this life? How could you?"

"It tore me to pieces, darlin'. I always hate leaving. But some people just can't handle this. What we are, what we do." He kissed her head. "It was time. You still have a life to live."

"Without my husband." 

"Yeah." The floor underneath them was freezing cold, sucking the heat out of their bodies even as the sound of the wake went on above them. "I got here as soon as I could."

Joanna sighed and pulled away to get to her feet. She was about to wipe her face on her sleeve when her dad stood and got out his handkerchief and held it to her face as he had when she was a toddler.

She mustered a watery smile, before taking it and drying her cheeks and nose. The mottled redness of her grief started to fade almost immediately. A few moments later they changed from Daddy and his Little Girl to Doctor Leonard McCoy and Commodore Darnell, and they went back to join the mourners in their house.

~*~*~*~*~

"When do you head back to Starfleet HQ?"

John was standing in front of the stove, ignoring grease spatter as he made sausage, biscuit and gravy for his daughter's small tribe. The kitchen was filled with the hiss and spit of the coffee maker as Joanna leaned against the counter, watching her Dad cook in faint light of the overcast morning. Caffeine was useless to most of the adults in the house that morning, but that didn't mean they didn't enjoy the taste. 

Jo's grandkids were in the living room, still half asleep and sprawled over the couches older than their parents. In fact, John was pretty sure the older one, London, had fallen back asleep.

"Got a text yesterday from Jim. He said something about a meeting with Pike. He's dead sure the _Enterprise_ is getting that five year mission." John sighed, watching the sausage fry. "Want to slice the tomato or start cracking eggs?"

"Tomato." She paused as he tossed her one tomato over his shoulder, then the second. She caught them without bothering to look up. "I heard they were going to take the _Enterprise_ from him."

John sighed. Scowled. He couldn't say he was surprised, if the Admirals had caught wind of what actually happened on Nibiru. 

"I still don't think he should have been given the _Enterprise_ ," Joanna said, and snorted, and a screech told him she was opening a drawer (off its rollers, he needed to fix that), looking for a knife. "You can't deny that for all that the kid has great potential he was as wet behind the ears as they came. There were many other people with much higher rank that they had _earned_ -"

"I agree." Damn few on the _Enterprise_ would ever say it. Everyone there knew that Jim was a good captain and a good man, but a man needed experience to temper impulse. That Jim had done as well as he had was a testament to his future skill; the man was a born leader despite his wild streak. John liked to credit himself and Commander Spock with Kirk's success... though never within Spock's hearing. 

Joanna made a surprised hum at his agreement as he pulled the browned sausage out of the grease to drain. "I agree, it was politics that put him in the chair. Yet he's proven he's a strong tactical thinker and damn good at bullshit. So it sounds like politics are trying to pull him out again." He turned to Joanna as he whisked the eggs; she had her tomatoes in neat, even slabs. "What's really going on?"

The scowl crossing Joanna's face was ugly. "Marcus is trying to manipulate Pike. He's been throwing his energy into something called Section 31; I've been looking into but it's been like digging through smoke. He's used the panic from the destruction of Vulcan to push for more militarization, and somehow he's been flashing new R&D specs that've been giving half the Admirals on his side permanent war boners." She poured herself some coffee. "He finds a way to toss mud on Kirk, Pike looks bad. Pike looks bad, the holdouts lose ground."

"Do they have something solid, or is it all noise?" He put the eggs aside to make a roux with the sausage grease, focusing on frying the flour and adding milk.

"He violated the Prime Directive." He could feel Joanna's eyes on the back of his neck. "And the only person to report it was Commander Spock."

John's lips tightened. "You know the Prime Directive is to keep assholes from trying to uplift a primitive society that isn't ready for advanced tech." His voice dropped. "Or to keep us from bioengineering a society that can't consent to it and create demons in the process. We saved a planet that would have had most of its life forms destroyed and got caught doing it. They have a new legend to tell around the fires at night, nothing more."

Joanna hid her face behind her coffee. "Dad, we call it the Prime Directive for a reason."

"We didn't betray any _law_ , sweetheart. We did the right thing." John frowned, deep lines etching around his jaw. "The difference between me and Jim is that I knew there could be consequences and I'm prepared to suffer them." John snorted, fond but sad. "I don't want to lose being Leonard McCoy just yet, but I refuse to regret helping them."

His daughter rolled her eyes. "For what it's worth, I agree. And if the political situation hadn't shifted so drastically, no one would want the media blowback of the golden boy being demoted. But-"

There was a faint whistle from both of Jo's com, barely heard above the racket starting up in the living room as the kids finally got going.

"Speak of the devil," Jo muttered, checking the caller ID and heading towards the bedroom. "I have to take this."

The roux was starting to thicken as he washed the whisk and used it to beat out the lumps. His sensitive hearing meant he could hear both sides of the conversation... and he dropped the whisk, excellent reflexes saving it from the floor as he heard what had happened. 

A terrorist attack on the Kelvin Archives in London had resulted in a gathering of the highest ranked officers on-world gathering... and being shot up. Almost half of the highest ranking Starfleet officers left had been murdered by the same terrorist. 

The only reason that Jo hadn't been there was because they had remembered she was on bereavement leave and a year from retirement. 

The kids were starting to run up and down the stairs, and their parents were finally stirring as Jo shut off her communicator. All the people in the house were awake. All of them could hear her.

"Cas, Sam, have breakfast and then lock up. Papaw and I are going back to Starfleet HQ."

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I have stated, this story has been written in anachronistic order, and I've had the week from hell. Please enjoy.


	3. Chapter 3

Around humans, Spock could almost always feel something that could be best described a constant white noise. It was similar to being in an apartment building with thin walls; everyone whispered but he could still hear the sibilants, if not the words. Human emotions added color to what would be a faint hissing, even if sound and color did not actually describe the sense itself. 

Yet in the aftermath of Harrison's attack on Starfleet HQ, the noise had become wordless screams and the colors had muted to rust-red and gray. Cap- Com- no, Captain Kirk's mind blared trumpets and dark blue loss. Despite this he was pleased to be Kirk's First Officer again, but he was also concerned. Kirk desired to kill the criminal known as John Harrison, something that was patently illegal; Spock was more than willing to hunt Khan down and bring him back for trial. That Admiral Marcus had approved of this plan was disturbing indeed. Spock did want justice-

A flicker of light caught the edge of the ruined Starfleet structures.

- __ **Why (leg can't move PAIN PAiNpAin)  
** is this happening?NononoNO-  
-not like this don't let him break-brownyellowfear-can't leave like this- A mistake, a mistake, this has to be a mistake-(facesfriendsenemiesregrets)  
 **** _-...I don't want to die...-_

Spock stopped, blinking rapidly as he brought himself out of the maelstrom of Pike's last moments. He kept his back straight, concentrating on his breathing, aware that he was standing in an open hallway. Anyone could see, could _know_ that he was unnerved, unbalanced by last night's events. He had tried to help Pike, to give him some measure of peace and acceptance. Instead he had been forced to fight a rising tide of despair that had engulfed the man before his death.

Carefully, Spock stepped away from those thoughts, those memories, walling them away until they could be approached and analyzed without distraction. He was a Vulcan.

He felt nothing.

His com beeped, noting a request for him to report to the 'Fleet Med Center for an examination. Without thought his body turned, feet carrying him along until he reached the doors.

He should have been surprised to see Doctor McCoy there, yet he wasn't. 

The doctor was a stable blue-green leaf-rustle amidst a sea of flickering, frantic orange static. His emotions were blatant, strong, but in his element they were calm and controlled; they bled experience and command to the point that even the senior medical staff of the med center were following his orders without thought. He walked about, reading charts and scanning people (sometimes sniffing them) and sending off a list of rapid-fire recommendations. Nothing escaped his notice.

Not even Spock.

"Hobgoblin! You're late."

Spock blinked. "I was not expecting to see you here, Doctor, I had thought you were-"

Doctor McCoy held up a finger for silence, then pointed at the biobed. "Sit your ass down."

Spock sat down. However, he wasn't finished. "I had thought you were-" and he did his best to ignore the scanner run over his body- "at a funeral. When did you-"

"About four hours ago," the Doctor said, using the tip of his scanner to tilt Spock's head back and forth to keep from touching his skin. "Just finished patching up the injured." His emotions dulled to gray-violet rain, washing against Spock's senses. "We managed to save more than we lost, at least. How you doing?"

"As you can see, I am uninjured. I have also been asked to return as First Officer aboard the _Enterprise_ , and I'm certain you will get your own recall orders soon-"

"I can see _that_ ," Doctor McCoy said, rolling his eyes, before landing a gentle poke on Spock's forehead. It was enough to convey genuine concern and worry for him, for Kirk and for the entirety of Starfleet. "How you doing in _here_?"

"I am fine." 

"Yeah, and I'm Chief Justice Fargo." Doctor McCoy sighed. "Brain activity is way off, Spock. Your vitals are as strong as ever, but-"

There was a blip from his com, and the doctor broke off his rant. "Hell. Need to wrap this up. Looks like those orders just came in. Was Jim on his way here yet?" 

Spock didn't dare move while the doctor was standing over him with a tricorder and a hypospray on his belt. Somehow the human always appeared far taller than he should. "No. I do not believe he will come for his medical exam."

"Then I'll take it to him, and you can tell me what the hell happened here on our way there," McCoy declared, stepping aside so Spock could get off the bed. "And don't you think you can weasel your way out of this because it involves _feelings_. I've seen you get rattled, remember? I'm not a counselor but I've got a good pair of ears and _lots_ of experience."

"You should then avail yourself to Captain Kirk when we get on board the shuttle for the Enterprise," Spock said as he stood up from the biobed. "Because I believe he has been far more affected by this experience than I have."

He started towards the door. 

"And they say Vulcan's don't lie," McCoy muttered. "Don't worry, son, I'll catch you when you fall."

Spock stopped. Then he built a new wall inside his head.

~*~*~*~*~

"I see you're still here," Kirk said without preamble as he walked into Med Bay. He'd half expected to find it empty, or Doctor M'Benga telling him that Bones had stalked out in disgust. After Scotty's resignation and Spock's lecture, he was wondering if he had any friends left.

Instead, he had found Bones puttering through Med Bay, checklist PADD in hand while holding a pathetic ball of fur that resembled a tribble in the other. Bones didn't reply to Kirk, just putting the tribble down and stroking its back; the small thing seemed to whine as Bones reached for a hypo. 

"Dammit."

"So, this is how it's going to be?" Kirk walked up, crossing his arms about two feet away. "No lecture, no attempt to tell me what to do, no threats? No telling me that firing on Qo'NoS is wrong? Or that Harrison should be brought back for trial?" He rubbed at his too-dry eyes. "Just the goddamned cold shoulder?"

Bones' green-hazel eyes flicked up to meet his as he gave the tribble an injection, and it cooed in relief. He then scooped it up, holding it to his chest as he stroked it, the soft purrs getting fainter. Bones murmured to it, soft apologies, rocking it back and forth. 

"We have to stop Harrison. He's killed Pike, and a room full of good officers," Kirk went on, feet moving without his consent, stomping back and forth as he tried to justify himself. "He wants to bring down the whole of the Federation. We need to-"

The little tribble stopped moving, and Bones laid it back down on a desk, fingers still stroking its fur. 

"Did that tribble just _die_?" Kirk asked, staring. "You just-"

"Keenser's pet, yeah. He brought it to me before he left the ship. Rover was just about ten years old, and that's about three times the age most wild tribbles ever get to be. I couldn't do a thing for it, but I promised Keenser I'd make it comfortable. Keenser couldn't bear to watch." Bones straightened, a wistful sigh escaping his lips. "Probably a kinder death than most of us get."

"Oh," Jim mumbled. He had been numb, he had been angry, and now he was being reminded that others grieved, too, for things and people he never knew about. 

"Yeah, you're right. I should go." Bones said, grabbing Jim's shoulders. "Because you're scaring the hell out of me. This isn't just about you, Jim. I understand the need to get this guy, I _do_. But there's more going on here than we know and _I don't like it_. Every instinct is telling me that something is _wrong_ here and we're getting in way over our heads. We're a civilian organization, Jim. Not military. You can't tell me you're okay with something that could turn into a _suicide mission_ for the whole crew if things hit the fan."

"Then why don't you?" Jim asked as he jerked away. He couldn't breathe. "Get out of here. Leave. You always say you're a doctor, not a soldier. Go hide like the goddamn coward you are." 

Bones closed his eyes and smiled, but was more baring his teeth. "You really think, after all the shit we've been through, I could leave you behind _now_? You're stuck with me, you goddamn idiot. I'll follow you into hell." He laughed, harsh and cruel and lost. "Heaven help us both."

Jim swallowed, heart in his throat. The air in here was really way too dry. He gave Bones' arm a sharp slap, turning to leave the Med Bay to make his way to the Bridge.

"Just... don't turn into a monster," he heard Bones say as he left. "Please. I couldn't bear to see that happen again."

~*~*~*~*~

John told himself that Jim was not Sarge.

The differences were huge. Sarge had been, up until that last battle, the consummate professional. He had been calm and collected, fierce and controlled. Completely by-the-book. He had experience and wisdom and John never would have imagined that Sarge would have lost it the way he did in that last fight, up against something he could not understand.

Jim was different: playful and brash, he seemed to careen about the universe with the ability to see outside the box and an uncanny knack for being at the right place at the right time. He never seemed to grow up, convinced that the galaxy would order itself around him so long as he was in the Captain's chair.

Somehow both had the complete trust of their people. 

The memory of Sarge's face as he shot The Kid made John flinch, choking down sour bile. Sarge had been unwilling to listen to his squad, to believe that they were outmatched. He had cracked under the odds facing them, and wound up killing a young man on his first mission because he wouldn't follow an illegal order. 

Jim wasn't Sarge. He listened to his crew... usually. 

_"Attention, crew of the Enterprise. This is your captain speaking. As most of you now know, Christopher Pike, former captain of this ship and our friend, is dead. The man who killed him has fled our system and is hiding on the Klingon home world- somewhere he believes we are unwilling to go. We are on our way there now."_

John forced himself to breathe, coaxing himself back into the skin of Leonard McCoy. Leonard McCoy, who still believed his Captain wouldn't send them out into a death trap, who wouldn't allow them to die for no reason. Sarge- Jim- wouldn't do that. 

His staff started filing in, and Len nodded to them, grabbing a bag jerky from his stash and popping some into his mouth as an excuse to keep from talking. Then they all stood facing the screen with Jim's resolute, exhausted expression looking back. 

_"Per Admiral Marcus, it is essential that our presence go undetected. Tensions between the Federation and the Klingon Empire have been high, and any provocation could lead to an all out war."_

"Dammit, Jim, don't let me down," Len mumbled, fingers crumbling the bag of jerky into paste. "Don't."

 _"I will personally be leading a landing party to an abandoned city on the surface of Qo'Nos, where we will_ capture _the fugitive John Harrison, and return him to Earth so that he can face judgment for his actions."_

His knees went weak, swaying into the biobed... but his faith was validated. 

_"Now let's get that sonuvabitch. Kirk out."_

And Leonard McCoy left to go to the bridge.

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I have had a bit more time to write this week, as I had the holiday and now have acute bronchitis. 
> 
> Watched a few episodes of Almost Human. Kinda hit or miss, and is it me or does it seem to almost be an unofficial sequel to Doom?


	4. Chapter 4

"Why the hell did he _surrender_?" 

"I don't know," Kirk muttered, as they turned the corner to get to the brig. "But he just took out a squad of Klingons single-handedly, and I want to know how."

There was a pause and stutter to Bones' steps as they walked towards the brig. "He- did- Sounds like we've got a superman on board," he said, overly casual. 

Kirk grunted, but he could relate to the shock. What Harrison had done was unbelievable. "That's why I want you to do a complete physio panel on him. I want to know what the hell we're dealing with- and don't you dare say something about him eating his vegetables or that he's got a good eye. There's good, and then there is inhuman." Kirk clenched his fists. "Whatever the hell is up with this guy..."

The brig was in a room with six walls, each one closed off with a transparent nano-wall that could be dissolved and reassembled at will, or set to filter certain biometrics. Technologically, the place was escape proof, made to withstand species far stronger than humanity. The only way in or out was through the nano wall. Harrison was under constant surveillance. Yet somehow he felt that Harrison was indulging the petty quirks of his hosts.

Harrison was sitting when they arrived, glancing at Kirk and Spock dismissively... before coming to his feet. 

Kirk blinked and craned his neck, and saw that Bones had stopped dead in his tracks. The doctor's jaw clenched as a frown etched his face in a cruel, harsh line as the cords of his neck stood out. The two men locked eyes, reminding Kirk of two feral cats, waiting for the other to twitch. He half expected Bones to start yowling.

A quick look at Spock said that he had noticed, and his quirked eyebrow was just as confused. 

"So, I see that you've brought your lapdog and your wolfhound, Captain," Harrison drawled, but Kirk noticed something that hadn't been there before. It showed in the tensing of his shoulders and the line of his spine, the way his fists clenched at his side. The man had been at ease since bringing him aboard but now...

"Is there a problem?" Kirk looked between his CMO and the prisoner. "Bones? Do you... know this man?"

"Never met the man before in my life," Bones declared as he walked up to the nano-wall and reached for his med kit for an extractor. He brought the wall dilator up and opened up a hole. "I'll start with a blood sample, but if you want me to completely examine the guy I'll need to get in there with him." He paused. "Preferably with a security detail."

Kirk nodded.

"Bones? An _appropriate_ handle." Harrison's lips twitched upwards, but he refused to relax, muscles knotted. His cold eyes were swallowed by their pupils.

"Put your arm through the hole," Bones ordered, voice a low growl. "I'm going to take a blood sample to examine you for genetic abnormalities." His gaze flickered over the man as Harrison hesitated, but then complied. "Beyond that, I'm duty bound to treat you as a physician."

The pale man could have been carved of marble, but he wasn't as cold as the green hazel eyes staring him down. 

Kirk kept looking back and forth between the two men. He would have been an idiot to not notice the interaction. Spock was also aware, and just as fascinated; his eyebrows looked to twitch off his face. 

The wariness on Harrison's face continued as Bones thrust the extractor into his upturned forearm... before he struck, preternaturally quick, grabbing Bone's wrist and _twisting_ , the bones and sinew cracking and snapping like thin plastic as jagged pieces of radius and ulna tore through the skin. 

The mostly full extractor went skittering across the floor. " _Motherfucker!_ " Bones snarled, slapping his other hand over his arm, cradling it to his chest and turning his back towards the barrier.

"Bones!" Kirk said, rushing forward. He wasn't quite sure what he would do, or say, as he grabbed his friend's arm. He wanted to keen at the angle; there was blood and ragged bone under the doctor's fingers. 

Harrison scoffed. "Soft. I suppose your choice of profession has made you weak." Bones straightened, pulling his arm to his chest again but refusing to look back at him. "You are not worth my time," Harrison said, and his nostrils flared. "You never were."

Spock approached Bones, reaching out. "Doctor, should I-?"

Bones closed his eyes, before hunching over. "I need to get this fixed." His voice was rough with anger, but given the angle of his wrist after the break, Kirk was surprised he wasn't yet in shock. 

"Spock, get him to the Med Bay," Kirk snarled, whirling around to glare at the man behind the barrier "I don't know what the _hell_ is wrong with you, you sick bastard, but-"

"Why aren't we moving, Captain? An unexpected malfunction, perhaps in your warp core?"

Kirk glared, then turned back to Bones, and gesturing for Spock to take him. He made sure that Spock had Bones out of earshot before pivoting on his heel and hissed. "Let me explain something to you, in case you didn't know. _You are a criminal, and I was sent to_ end _you_. You _will_ tell me and you will tell me _now_ how you know my CMO and why you _specifically_ attacked him." His nose was almost against the nano-wall. "And if you tell me the truth I might not space you."

"I've never met your 'Chief Medical Officer,'" the man said, body relaxing now that Spock and Bones were gone; Kirk suspected it was the lack of Bones here that helped him regain his confidence. Which made absolutely no sense at all. "The man you call 'Bones' is nothing to me." He paused. "But ignore what I tell you and put your entire crew in peril."

Kirk shook his head in disgust, pivoting on one foot to leave. 

"Look for yourself, Captain. Into your own ally's history as well as into these coordinates: 23.17.46.11. Not far from earth, and investigating that will let you know why I did, what I did."

"You haven't answered my question," Kirk said, turning back. His fists curled at his sides. "How do you know Doctor McCoy?"

"I don't. Not under that name. But once, I called him 'Reaper.'"

~*~*~*~*~

"How bad is the break?" Spock asked, his hand on the doctor's elbow as they made their way to the turbo lift, their pace brisk despite the doctor's injury.

"Compound fracture, went through the skin," Doctor McCoy said, teeth grinding together. "You don't have to walk me there, Spock, I've had worse."

Spock blinked. He had read the Doctor's file, including his medical records, and nowhere had that come up. "Be that as it may, your injury is severe and I would be remiss in my duties to not see you-"

The doctor kept getting ahead of him, and it flew against all of his experience with humans in pain. He tried to stop to examine the injury, but the doctor kept moving.

"I'm fine, Spock," Doctor McCoy continued, and Spock winced as he once again put his hand on the doctor's elbow. The emotional leakage from the doctor was, as always, overwhelming. He had expected pain, and there was, but not the physical kind. Instead Spock felt a maelstrom of self-accusation, guilt, loathing, regret, righteousness and under all of it was a pure, unbridled rage. They were strong enough to batter at his mental barriers as he withdrew, leaving him with the mental equivalent of blinking away sunspots. 

He was more than familiar with the doctor's normal moods: fondness, exasperation with himself and the Captain, a deep-seated protectiveness and caring that reminded him painfully of his own mother. Yet underneath all of it was a sense of _restraint_. It was the foundation, the bedrock, of Doctor McCoy's personality. With it, he had become the emotional touchstone of most of the crew; everyone was fearless with Jim Kirk. They took their fears to Leonard McCoy. That sense of restraint was gone, scoured by the storm.

They stopped in front of the turbo lift. 

"Go back," McCoy ordered, straightening and turning to look Spock in the eye. 

"Doctor?"

"That man- he's K- he's dangerous."

"That was made obvious when he took out an entire patrol single-handedly," Spock retorted. "Nevertheless, he is restrained, and the Captain should be... should be..." he paused as he looked down at blood covering McCoy's fingers. Being behind a nano-wall hadn't stopped Harrison at all. "You are sure?"

"As death and taxes." 

Spock nodded, heading back towards the brig. He didn't see the relief and guilt mix on McCoy's face. There was no need, and that it was there was more puzzling than the mystery of John Harrison and their malfunctioning warp core.

Walking back to the brig took approximately thirty-one point five seconds, and another twenty-eight seconds to get through the security cordon. It took nine more seconds for him to return to the brig that held John Harrison. 

He could feel the a sickly yellow green dissonance coming from the Captain, who was reeling away from the nano-wall like he had been struck. Spock felt a line form between his brows in puzzlement, and no small amount of concern. The nano-wall was intact.

"Captain..?"

"Heed my words," Harrison said, ignoring Spock. "And see for yourself. But he will betray you, Kirk. Like he once betrayed me."

"Never." Kirk backed away, shaking his head, and gestured curtly for Spock to follow. He turned on his heel, teeth clenched together as he marched away. "And what the hell are you doing here, Spock? I told you to get Doctor McCoy to Med Bay," Kirk snapped as they left the brig, and out of earshot of Harrison.

"Doctor McCoy feared for your safety. I see that he had some right to be concerned, though it is not unexpected that Harrison would try to manipulate you. What did he say?" Spock asked. "You are upset."

"You're damn right I'm upset. We don't know why our warp core malfunctioned, we don't know why Harrison saved us and then surrendered without a fight. We sure as hell don't know why he decided to pick on _Bones_." He stopped, a tremor going down his back. "He picked the most harmless guy on the ship-"

"Somehow I doubt that-" Spock tried to interrupt. Doctor McCoy was proud of his status as a pacifist, but he was hardly _harmless_.

"And we don't have any answers." He turned to Spock, but his eyes were unfocused. "And I'm sick of it. I'm going to make a call. And do some homework. You have the conn."

Spock knew that Christopher Pike's death had left Kirk angered and grieving. Yet he had not expected to feel this: a vibrant orange trill of defiance and dread. 

"What did John Harrison say about Doctor McCoy?"

"A bunch of bullshit. Let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope it met expectations.


	5. Chapter 5

Len had kept two of his guns, just in case. 

Part of it was a sense of nostalgia. They were fine weapons, and he trusted them like his own hands. He kept them in working order, cleaned and maintained, and he fabricated parts as needed. These weapons had seen him through two and a half centuries of life, and they were perfect for their intended task.

The other reason was practical. Phasers didn't work on him at anything but the kill setting, and would only slow him down. He doubted they would work on a mutant. If someone ever did dig up C-24, he wanted to be prepared. 

The last reason was... phasers didn't work on him. Poison didn't; disease didn't. There might come a time when... 

He didn't know if Jim was still talking to Khan, or even where the kid had gone. His body was still trying to shake off the adrenaline rush of seeing Khan again; like waking up repeatedly into the same nightmare. His muscles were still twitching as his vision and hearing had sharpened from the rush; Khan was going to try to ruin his life. Again. 

Len had no idea how Khan had gotten there, why he was posing as a Starfleet agent, or how he had even gotten back to Earth. Sam had crashed the _Botany Bay's_ navigational computer. Without that, the ship should have headed into dead space. Somehow, someone had dug him up. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling his pulse pound behind his eyes as he fought down rage. He needed a clear head, to focus on something, anything, else. 

Med Bay was in working order, there were no injuries, everyone was at their stations at high alert. The shit was heading straight for the fan, and they were in that space between hit and splatter. Being seen drinking wouldn't help anyone's morale, not to mention being pointless. Any and all possible prep work was done, as he made sure his people were fed and rested and taking the advantage of the down time to keep everything ready for the inevitable.

So instead of fretting Len reached under his desk for his DNA-coded lock box. The weapon inside could use a good polishing, and taking it apart and putting it back together would help calm him nerves. Plus... Khan was alone, and he might be able to...

He frowned, staring at the box as he thumbed the lock, then rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. He flipped open the lid-

"Hey." Jim was standing there, leaning against the door of his office. "Bones."

And closed it again. "Jim. Finished talking to our guest?" He stood, and saw Jim staring at him. At his hands.

No. At his old ink.

The Reaper tattoo had been there since he had joined the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, black eventually fading to a hunter green, to nothing but a shadow up his left forearm. The arm that had been broken less than thirty minutes ago.

Jim had seen it before; they'd been roommates at the Academy. Yet now, he crossed the two steps to Len's desk and grasped Len's wrist like it was some kind of alien life form. Jim turned it over to the spot where, earlier, it had been torn from the inside by his own bones. 

"What does the name 'Reaper' mean to you?" Jim asked, his fingers tracing over the healed, whole skin.

Lie, or deflect? "What the hell are you talking about?" Len asked, keeping his voice level. Jim looked up to meet his eyes, then blinked, paused, as he glanced down at Len's desk like he was seeing it for the first time. He dropped Len's arm. 

And picked up the Nibiruian projectile point, still crusty with Len's blood. "Harrison told me things. A lot of things. I've called Scotty, he's investigating one of them now. But at any rate, he said..." Blue eyes searched hazel, before pinching the bridge of his nose. 

"Well. He strongly implied you drank baby's blood with a twist of lemon while munching kittens on your Friday nights."

Len blinked. "I only drink blood on the rocks, Jim. You know that." The Captain cracked a smile. 

"Yeah, well," he ran his finger over the razor sharp edge of the projectile point. "You know I never asked, Bones. Everyone's got stuff they don't want to talk about and...you were always eager to tell me stories. About Joanna, your ex... and... I did some checking." He grasped the point in his hand, and Bones jumped as blood oozed out of the clenched fingers. "John Harrison didn't exist before a year ago." He licked his lips. "Leonard McCoy didn't exist before fifteen. And you haven't aged a day."

"Jim- he's manipulating you. _Using_ you. Can't you see it?" He stepped close, into Jim's personal space, taking his injured hand and putting the point back on his desk before grabbing a dermal regenerator. Bitter anger coated his tongue as he realized this might be the last time he got to do this for Jim... Or anyone, as Leonard McCoy. 

_Please, don't make me leave. This is a life I_ like.

"Khan wants to see you dance on his chess board while he moves you around. I don't know what his long game is, but you can't let him do this. Something is wrong here."

"Khan?" Jim jerked his hand away. "So you do know him. Wait- who's Khan?"

Now it was Len's turn to palm his face. "Khan Noonien Singh. That's his name. He's an Augment, and was a warlord, during the Eugenics Wars. That was almost three hundred years ago. He and eighty of his people escaped justice in cryo-stasis, leaving behind the cursed earth."

"Then how the hell do _you_ know him?"

"I aced my history prereqs," Len said, choosing _deflect_ and hoping it worked. "Whatever the hell he says... just remember, the best lie is three-quarters truth. He'll give you just enough rope to hang yourself, telling you enough truth to make everything plausible, but withhold the fact that he's been stacking the deck the entire time."

"He wants us to open up one of the torpedoes," Jim said, closing his hand and tugging it free. He swallowed, wild-eyed, and backed away. There was fear there, betrayal. "Bones... when this is over-"

"I'm still your friend, Jim. I'm still _me_." Len looked away. "Just... don't trust the demon."

"No worries about _that_." Jim inhaled, lips pulling into a drawn out line. "Come on, I need to talk to Spock about opening up the torpedo. Without Scotty, this could turn out messy."

" _What?_ Are you out of your corn-fed mind?" Len yelped, Georgia accent thickening to incomprehensible and almost grabbing Jim, but the Captain flinched away. "You actually want to pop open a four ton stick of dynamite _without_ our Chief Engineer?" 

Jim blinked. Blinked, then chuckled weakly as he covered his face. "God. You're you." He went limp against the office door frame, covering his eyes with one hand while his shoulders shook with silent, hysterical laughter. "Thank god. You're you."

"Always have been." He put his large, surgeon's hands on Jim's shoulders and squeezed. "Come on, we need to talk to the hobgoblin."

Jim straightened his back, nodding, surreptitiously wiping his eyes. "Yeah. Let's go."

~*~*~*~*~

James T. Kirk remembered Bones' various quirks. Rooming with Leonard McCoy had never been easy: he talked incessantly about his daughter, used metaphors like bludgeons, made him eat savory cornbread and drink sweet tea. Yet the worst part had been the nightmares.

_"Once, I called him 'Reaper.'"_

The first time it had happened, he had heard a thump and a howl, pulling him out of his own dreams. He had gotten up, stumbling to the other bunk in their dorm room, more asleep than awake. He hadn't been expecting anything, really. Not at four in the morning after a night of good booze and a friendly fellow-cadet to take his attention.

Bones had been flailing, making small whimpers Jim thought of as more from a dying animal than a grown human. In his still-drunken stupor he had tried shaking Bones' shoulder...

He'd awakened a few moments later with Bones running a tricorder over him and a regenerator and apologizing profusely, and had extracted the promise to never, _ever_ try to wake him up again.

_"Ask yourself, how well do you know your 'CMO'?"_

He had known there was something... odd, about Bones. He never slowed down. Never got sick. Never stayed hurt. Never needed a full night's sleep. Of course, they were at the Academy in those days and Jim was the same way: living like he was immortal and indestructible. Except that when the Narada had attacked, and Med Bay had been damaged. Bones had been there the entire time and come through without a scratch. Then came Nibiru and-

He had tried to ignore it, brush it off as nothing. The forest had glowed red, giving a weird macabre feeling to the whole mission. Then he had seen Bones take a hit, and...

_"Ask him, Captain. See if he denies it. What kind of man is given the name Reaper by his fellows?"_

Then he'd thought nothing of it, because Spock was being an idiot and refusing to be rescued. But then Harrison (Khan? He thought he remembered hearing about Khan in eighth grade history) had a talent for presenting things he didn't want to see.

Kirk shook the memory away as he listened to Bones and Doctor Marcus (who was, now, thankfully clothed) banter, joining in. Carol had requested the steadiest hands on the ship. Kirk could think of none better.

Bones and Doctor Marcus worked their way through the torpedo's outer casing with Bones holding a pair of precision cutters.

_"Ready, Doctor McCoy?"_   
_"And raring."_

Then, as the saying went: the excrement hit the rotary propeller. There was a faint snip, and the door on the side of the torpedo slammed shut on Bones' arm, making the man cuss like a sailor. _"What the hell just happened? I can't get my arm out!"_

_"I don't..."_ Marcus' voice came over the com, and Kirk felt his stomach hit his knees. 

"Sir, the torpedo just armed itself," Sulu said, perplexed and shocked. "What kind of torpedo has a _self-destruct sequence_?" 

"Warhead set to detonate in sixty seconds!"

"Lock onto their positions and beam them back aboard! _Right now_!" Jim ordered, leaning forward.

"With his arm trapped inside it, the transporter is unable to differentiate between Doctor McCoy and the torpedo. We cannot beam one back without the other," Spock said, in a higher pitch than normal as he spun in his seat, standing to stare at the view screen.

"Doctor Marcus, can you disarm it?"

_"I'm trying!"_

_"Jim, get her out of here. You can beam her out without any problem."_ The voice of Bones on the other end made him swallow a horrific, painful lump. Calm, simple, and selfless. He felt Uhura grab his hand and squeeze for all she was worth.

_"He will call me a monster, but I have seen him kill in cold blood."_ Khan's words flashed across his mind as they heard Doctor Marcus curse. The entire bridge then heard something impossible:

There was a shriek of tortured metal, a hoarse shout and the sound of bodies hitting the dirt as the beeps of the timer squealed, before going dead.

_"Holy shit!"_ Doctor Marcus shrieked. _"How did you- you just-"_

_"Never mind that,"_ Bone answered. _"Jim, you need to... oh my god. Someone get a surgical team prepped on the_ Enterprise _, stat!"_

"Doctor McCoy, what happened? Are you all right?" Jim realized that Uhura had grabbed his shoulder for a moment, and he saw her turn to Spock, who let her lean back against him. The entire bridge crew took a collective breath. 

_"I'm fine, Jim, but she's not."_

"Doctor Marcus?"

_"I'm all right, Captain, if a bit bruised. I don't think Doctor McCoy knows his own strength,"_ he heard her answer. _"He just tore off the panel that had him trapped."_

_"We need to beam this torpedo directly to the Med Bay,”_ Bones ordered, _"I'll need to scrub up as soon as I arrive. Jim, you are not going to believe this."_

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed. 
> 
> I do like and want concrit, though I may not respond to it right away. Reacting hastily when I've been tired and stressed tends to have me saying things I shouldn't say, but I do want people to tell me if they spot errors. 
> 
> Thankfully I'm almost over the bronchitis. Here's to breathing!
> 
> Hope you had a good holiday.


	6. Chapter 6

"How long has he been in there?" Jim asked when he arrived at Med Bay, standing at the edge of the sterile field cordon that had been created by the Med Bay's surgical theater. Doctor McCoy's back was to the door, working on the frozen woman they had found. 

"A little over an hour, Captain," Spock replied. He was reading a PADD as Doctor Marcus walked around the biobed, running her scans over the empty torpedo and just as empty cryotube. "The person we found inside was gravely injured, though nothing beyond the capacity of our Med Bay."

"But I'm willing to bet at the time she was placed inside it was her only option," Marcus said. "This tech- it's ancient. We haven't had to freeze anyone since the warp drive was created. She was probably put inside in the hope that someday medical science would be able to heal her." She made an admiring glance at the torpedo. "Whoever designed these was just brilliant. The drive core was shrunk to the point that they could remove a fuel cell and replace it with a cryotube, and use the minimal power output of the torpedo to mask the life signs of the people inside."

"How old is ancient?" Kirk asked, rubbing his chin. He found himself staring at Bones' back, face covered and arms bare as he wielded nano-precision tools up and down the woman's back. If he had to guess, he would say she had a spinal injury.

"My people first encountered yours about two hundred and thirty years ago, Captain." Spock was staring at him intently. "So-"

"Between two to three hundred years," Marcus answered. "Captain, is Doctor McCoy well versed in ancient technology?"

Kirk gave her a humorless, toothy smile. "He shouldn't be." He took a deep breath. "Doctor McCoy told me he recognized our fugitive, and that his real name was Khan Noonien Singh, a warlord that had escaped justice after the end of the Eugenics Wars, with eighty of his people. When I asked Khan how he knew Bones," Kirk sucked in a breath. "He implied that Doctor McCoy was worse than he was."

"That would be a highly illogical assumption, based on our knowledge of the fugitive, as well as our prior relationship with the Doctor." Spock's eyebrow, as opposed to Spock's words, asked Kirk 'you remember the guy who couldn't leave Earth without you? Loves puppies and babies? Mint Juleps and bad horror movies? That guy?' 

Jim knew he needed sleep when he imagined Bones' and Spock's eyebrows falling in love and getting married. He shook it off.

"I know, just," Kirk ran a hand over his face. He exhaled, trying to bring his conflicted emotions together. "The guy may be a mass murderer but we're stuck here not moving, he surrendered without a fight, has been pretty damn cooperative and I'm still confused as hell. We're missing something and we don't have time to find it."

They fell into silence as the sterile field dropped. Doctor McCoy turned around, nodding to them as he removed face mask and gloves, walking over as his nurses moved the woman to a bed for recovery. 

"She's out of danger, and I repaired the damage." He sounded, for the first time since Jim had known him, utterly exhausted. "She'll make a full recovery in time. I'm going to keep her sedated, though. I don't want her to wake up with strangers."

There was more to it than that, and Kirk opened his mouth to say so-

"My office, Jim," Bones ordered, putting one hand up to stop him from talking. Then he grimaced when Kirk opened his mouth to protest. "Please."

Kirk went hot, cold, that someone would _dare_ try to order him on his own ship... but he might finally get some answers. "Fine."

The spear head was still on Bone's desk. Kirk's eyes fixed on that as he followed Bones into the cubby he called an office and felt the faint hiss of air as the door closed behind him. Kirk crossed his arms as Bones put his palms on his desk, waiting on the other man to explain, to speak, and as the moments ticked on, for him to even turn around. 

The doctor's shoulders were shaking, hands curling into fists.

"Bones-"

"She's alive," he whispered, and a sob broke free as he pressed his fists to his face. " _She's alive_."

"Bones, who is she?" he asked, taken the step and a half to his friend's side (still his friend, dammit, because this was _Bones_ ) and squeezed his shoulder. "Who are _you?_ "

He felt more than saw Bones swallow. "She's my sister. My twin sister. Samantha Grimm." He ran his sleeve over his face and turned to Jim, eyes red rimmed but relieved. He turned around, sitting on the edge of his desk, taking a deep breath. "Here's the short, dirty version. We survive this, I'll give you all the details you want." He started cracking his knuckles. "In 2046 some damn fool scientists discovered a synthetic twenty-fourth chromosome pair. In theory, it was supposed to give anyone it was grafted to super strength, fitness, healing, and intelligence."

"In theory?" Kirk wished he could manage a decent eyebrow twitch. He had gotten the impression his friend might be an Augment, but not... something else. "Sounds like a good idea. What went wrong?"

"What didn't?" He rubbed his face. "The story is long, complicated, and gory as all hell, but the experiment resulted in a blood-thirsty abomination that could infect others to become the same. They sent in a team of marines into the quarantine: the Rapid Response Tactical Squad. Out of a group of nearly two hundred civilian scientists and eight highly trained specialists... only one marine and one scientist survived."

"You were the scientist?"

Bones almost smiled before standing up and snapping off a crisp parade ground salute. "Staff Sergeant John Grimm, at your service." He sank back down at Kirk's incredulous stare. "Sam was the scientist. Most of my... my team, were dragged off and killed, but-" he swallowed again, looking away and grunting. "At any rate, I caught a bullet to the gut and was bleeding out. Sam had taken some of the serum, the C-24, and was desperate enough to use it on me." He hugged his arms, shuddering. "For me, it worked as advertised. I woke up forty minutes later, healed, and fought my way out."

"You survived all this time? What is a two hundred and forty year old soldier doing on my ship?" Kirk asked, befuddled, his stomach an icy mess. "And what happened to the real McCoy?"

"Been waiting your whole life to make that pun, haven't you, kid?" Bones- no, John, he couldn't call him Bones right then- said with a snort. "I invented him, probably for the same reasons that Khan created John Harrison." His lips thinned. "After World War III, things were ugly. Mutants and genetic augments were illegal. You were discovered, you were shipped out to the wastelands to die. After the Vulcans came, things got better, but augmenting the human genome is still taboo. You know that, Jim, it's basic history. Being stripped of my medical license and drummed out of Starfleet would just be the beginning. Some idiot decides they want to use me to reconstruct C-24? We're looking at the probable end of the human species and most life on Earth."

Jim was quiet as that sank in, mind reeling from the implication. "That doesn't explain how you know Khan," Jim pointed out. 

"He was the head of Union Aerospace Corporation, the people responsible for the discovery and development of C-24. After the disaster at Olduvai, I had to take Sam to get medical help... Khan caught us. Kept us. Tortured us." John met Jim's eyes. "He used Sam as leverage to get me to do what he wanted. Eventually, we escaped again, but Sam-" tears ran down his face, eyes that were wracked with guilt. "She was shot. Offered to stay behind, to make sure that whatever happened to Khan, that he would never come back to Earth. There were... other things, to consider, so I did as she asked. I thought Khan and his cronies would die in the space between stars, but I was wrong."

"And then?"

"And then, I survived. We don't have time for the details, Jim. But I'm the same crotchety bastard you met on the shuttle four years ago. Just... just older, is all."

Jim was silent for a several moments before answering.

"You're right. I don't have time to deal with this now, and you're still the best damn doctor in the 'fleet," Kirk said. "I'm going to talk to Khan about why he put people inside those torpedoes. You coming?"

John shook his head. "No. I might lose control down there. I was a killer, Jim. I don't want to be again." He gave Jim a watery smile. "Let me sit with Sam for awhile. Please."

"I could never say no to you," Jim muttered as he turned to walk out the door. Then he paused, turning back with a puzzled look on his face. "Reaper? As in, Grim Reaper?"

"Along with me being the team medic, yeah. They were marines, Jim, not poets." Len palmed his face as he spoke. "They stuck Reaper on me faster than you did Bones. I'm lucky that's the worst they could come up with."

A relieved smile crossed Jim's face as he left, shaking his head as he went to the brig.

~*~*~*~*~

"Spock, I need to ask you for a favor," the Captain asked as they walked back to the brig. His emotions were a muddy rainbow, fizzing like soda, and Spock had to pull himself away from it.

"What kind of favor?" Kirk asking for a favor was always cause for suspicion.

"I'm going to talk to Harrison, Khan, whatever, and I'm going to be revealing things that Doctor McCoy told me in confidence." Kirk stopped, wheeling to look Spock in the eye. "I need your promise that you won't share anything about Doctor McCoy that is revealed in that room."

"What has Doctor McCoy told you? Does it pertain to how he knows the prisoner?" Spock asked, but it was easy to surmise that it was true. 

"Yes." Jim peered into Spock's face, leaning towards him... and Spock found himself leaning away. Jim's mind had gone still and quiet with certainty. "I don't know a hell of a lot right now but I do know that I trust Doctor McCoy. I won't let you ruin his life because you can't keep your damn mouth shut. Now either you can promise not to share what you hear, or you can stop now and go back to the bridge. But you choose now."

"If he has engaged in something illegal-" Spock began, before Kirk turned his back. 

"There's a difference between wrong and illegal, and you know it. If you can't make your mind up, you can stay here."

"Captain-" Spock started, then unsure of what to say. 

"I can't order you to promise but I can order you back to the bridge," Kirk said, back still to him. "Choose."

Spock chose. "I promise. I will not reveal any secrets about Doctor McCoy that may come to light," he said, surprised by the small crack in his voice. 

Kirk gave him another searching look, before nodding and heading into the brig and ordering the security officers to leave.

The prisoner was waiting for them. 

He was sitting, back straight and poised, his face blank as marble. His emotions were similarly composed: a bare, empty wind in the shades of winter. 'Inhuman' was what came to mind, after spending so much time around the brilliant spectrum of the Captain and the rest of the crew.

"So," the Captain began, as the prisoner's pale eyes rose to meet his. "Khan. Nice to meet you. Looking well for a three hundred year old man who was, supposedly, lost in deep space. Care to tell me how Samantha Grimm managed to get into one of those torpedoes we had been ordered to use to kill you?"

"Ah, I see that John has been telling tales," the prisoner, who did not bother to deny the name or the description. A faint smile creased his face. "Jealous, Kirk? That I had such _intimate_ knowledge of your friend, that you did not? It is understandable. John is a passionate man. That he chose not to share that with you must be... galling. " He stood, stepping close to the nanowall. "There are men and women in all of the torpedoes. I put them there. As to the lovely Doctor Grimm, she smuggled herself aboard my ship, as I'm sure her brother has told you. She destroyed our ship's navigational abilities. In an effort to save herself she killed one of my crew and took his place." Khan's mouth twisted. "So she slept amongst us, a lone sheep in a pack of wolves."

"If your navigational systems were irreparably damaged, then how are you still alive?" Spock asked. His mind catalogued the dialogue, making the unsaid connections. The woman in the torpedo was Samantha Grimm. Her brother was John. His name would therefore be John Grimm. They were talking about Doctor McCoy, who was Samantha Grimm's brother. Samantha Grimm, who had come out of a cryto tube that was Eugenics Era technology.

Doctor McCoy, logically, had to be between two and three hundred years old. Humans did not live much more than a hundred years. Therefore, Doctor McCoy was not human. 

He was, most likely, an Augment. 

Spock was a Vulcan. He didn't waste time on denials, or feeling betrayed, even if the knowledge felt incomplete and somehow _wrong_. Doctor McCoy, aka John Grimm, was an Augment. It was the only logical conclusion. The question, of course, was why he acted so atypical of every known Eugenics Era Augment ever recorded.

"We fled the Reaper, flew until our engines burned out, but our ship's AI was able to keep us from major damage. We slept for centuries, unknowing if we would awaken again." Khan looked down, then met Kirk's eyes again, before glancing at Spock. "As a result of the destruction of Vulcan your Starfleet began aggressively searching distant quadrants of space. My ship was found, and I alone was revived." Then he snarled. "Your Admiral Marcus created the fiction of John Harrison the moment I was awakened, planning to use me to advance his cause."

"Why would a Starfleet Admiral as a three hundred year old frozen man for help?" Kirk asked, head tilted to the side. 

"Because I am _better_."

"At what?"

"Everything," Khan said without a trace of doubt. "Alexander Marcus needed to respond to an uncivilized threat in a civilized time. To do that, he needed a warrior's mind; my mind, to design weapons and warships."

"You are suggesting that the Admiral violated every regulation he vowed to uphold simply so that he could exploit your intellect," Spock said, and somehow, here, he felt betrayal. Some shade of Pike, who had trusted his fellow Admiral to protect and uphold the tenets of the Federation and the honor of Starfleet. Disgust fell deep into his belly before he disconnected, walled it off. Yet he could already feel cracks forming.

"He wanted to exploit my _savagery_ ," Khan came back. "Intellect alone is useless in a fight, Mister Spock. You? You won't even break a rule." He stared at Spock with contempt. "How could you be expected to break bone?"

He turned back to Kirk. "Marcus used me to design weapons, to realize his vision of a militarized Starfleet. He sent you to use those weapons, to fire _my_ torpedoes on an unsuspecting planet. Then he purposely crippled your ship in enemy space, where it could not escape... leading to one inevitable outcome. The Klingons would come searching for whomever was responsible and you would have no chance to escape. Marcus would finally have the war he talked about. The war he always wanted."

Spock nodded. That was it, the final missing piece. Why Marcus had been so willing to send Kirk off on a mission to commit murder, when it could potentially start a war. The war was the goal the whole time.

"Yet, for all that, you are absolutely terrified of my CMO," the Captain cut in. His eyes were narrowed. "And don't you bother to deny it."

"Is that what you wanted to know?" Khan whispered, sitting down. "Marcus used my family, my crew, to manipulate me, but your friend? Your _precious_ doctor? He stole my daughter, and then _killed_ my unborn children before driving my family into the void. I, who ruled a quarter of the Earth in my time was driven off my world by a former _medic_. I sent my best soldiers against him and _they all failed_." His chest worked like bellows. "So _yes_ , I am afraid of him. I am savage. I killed your Starfleet officers as revenge against Marcus when I failed to rescue my crew from him. I had no reason to think Marcus had not carried through on his promise to kill my people." He got up again, walking towards Kirk. "Yet the Reaper? He is _relentless_. A monster that kills at the whims of his masters until they can no longer retain his allegiance. You should fear that he will bite your hand, too."

"And yet, oddly, I don't." Spock could feel the lie for what it was, but he didn't tell Khan that. Kirk was bluffing. "Because unlike you, I never tried to commit genocide."

"I only tried to protect my family." Khan looked away, and Spock saw tears run down the former warlord's face. "Is there anything you would not do, for your family?"

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might not be able to post the next chapter for awhile, so I'm going ahead and posting it now. Hope you enjoyed.


	7. Chapter 7

John had always wondered if the mutations C-24 inflicted were a feature, not a bug.

He sat next to Sam's biobed, holding her hand, listening to her breathe against the steady beep of her heart monitor. Around him he could hear his staff moving, breathing, working, but he ignored them in favor of Sam. She had always been his weak spot, and while they had been estranged for years, when they had needed each other they had always come through.

Until that last moment, when she had made him promise to live. Live, and protect the kid.

They had never been able to answer the most important questions about C-24. Why did it mutate some people and not others? Who had invented it? Why had some people been able to keep their minds, and why had most turned into mindless monsters?

John rubbed his face, then kissed Sam's hand as he got up. Jim was going to want answers and he really had none. Other than Sam's speculation that potential for violence and psychosis was what triggered the mutation, they were in the dark. Even then, it was a pretty shaky hypothesis. Reaper had been a killer, and Leonard McCoy often looked back on his life and shuddered.

God. Jim.

Either John had taken the biggest leap of faith in his life, or he had just killed Leonard McCoy. 

Well, he could try to find one answer, at least. He knew the properties of Khan's blood. The bastard had used the ability to heal Sam as blackmail for almost two years before the egomaniac had put John into storage.

John's own blood, on the other hand... He got to his feet, grabbing a syringe and heading to his office where Rover sat in a stasis box on the shelves above his desk. Tribbles were probably the most innocuous species in the galaxy. They were affectionate and gentle. He doubted they had a psychotic or violent gene in their boneless bodies. He extracted his own blood, then injected the full syringe into the tribble with a soft apology, feeling the warmth of his body suffuse Rover's lifeless form. It took all of a minute. 

He went back to his stool, watching the rise and fall of Sam's chest.

"How long has it been?"

John blinked, looking up at Carol Marcus, who gave him a cautious smile. Her bare arms were still bruised from where he had tackled her on the planetoid, attempting to shield her from the torpedo. His forebrain had known that was a stupid, instinctual reaction, but one he had followed nonetheless. Protect the civilians. 

"How long what?"

"Since you saw her?" Doctor Marcus nodded towards Sam. "She must have been very important to you."

Len frowned, trying to bring himself back to the present. He took a deep breath. "Yeah. She's family."

Doctor Marcus' face was hidden by her hair. "Were you close?"

Leonard McCoy, John reminded himself, had no siblings. "Like twins." 

They were cut off as the door to Med Bay opened, and Len felt his entire body clench in loathing. 

Khan, in Starfleet blacks, being surrounded by a pack of security officers who were there only to make the Jim feel like he had some kind of control over the Augment. Why Khan was allowing it, he had no idea.

"Security Chief, what the hell is _that_ ," Len said, lips curling into a snarl as he pointed to Khan, "doing in my Med Bay?"

"The Captain ordered us to bring him here." The newly appointed chief looked nervous. "Don't worry, we have him contained."

Khan smirked, before sauntering to take a seat on the biobed in front of Len, his eyes moving up and down Len's body in a way that made him want to run for the decontamination shower. Then he moved his gaze to Carol Marcus, finally resting on Sam's vulnerable form. "I see you have found your sister. Ironic, that you would be drawn to her out of the rest of my crew." He smiled, then leered at Sam. "She hasn't changed at all-"

Len slammed his fists down on the biobed, rattling the solid metal and grabbing the edge with his bare hands, bending the bench in his grip.

"Shut. Your. _Damn_. Mouth."

Khan's jaw closed with a click.

Len could feel himself vibrating, muscles locked as he fought to keep from flying at Khan. He could feel the eyes of his staff and fellow crew on him as he stepped towards Khan, grabbing the monster's shoulder and _squeezing_ , reminding the Augment who he was dealing with.

" _You try anything, motherfucker, and they won't find the pieces until I shit you out,_ " he hissed, just below human hearing, words frothing across his lips. 

Their eyes locked, the gaze of two predators, waiting for the other to make their move.

"Doctor?" Carol Marcus said, quietly, carefully approaching and putting her hand on Len's elbow. "Doctor, the Captain wants you to examine him."

Len took a deep breath, reaching for his tricorder, grinding his teeth as he went through the motions of examining his 'guest.'

A moment later, all the screens lit up and showed Jim talking to Admiral Marcus. Len knew that Jim was good at bluffing, but Marcus held the entire deck. All Jim _could_ do was tuck tail and run. "Damn."

"If you think you're safe at warp," Khan said, calm and measured when the _Enterprise_ shuddered into motion. "You're wrong."

Doctor Marcus stared at him for a beat... then took off running.

~*~*~*~*~

"What else did he tell you? That he's a peace keeper?" the Admiral said, incredulous. "He's _playing_ you son, can't you see that?"

"Yes, I can, sir. I know exactly who I'm dealing with. Khan Noonien Singh, former warlord, fled earth with eighty of his followers in order to escape justice. Caused a nuclear conflagration in order to stop the people pursuing him and was either waiting until Earth recovered, or they found a new world. He also plays a mean game of chess, if I understand. He'll tell you just enough truth to get you to doubt everything," Kirk said, before he paused and met the Admiral's eyes. "Before you realize he just stacked the deck against you."

"I would just _love_ to know how you know more about Harrison than I did after having him for almost a year," Admiral Marcus responded, after a moment. "Because he played me like a puppet. You know how dangerous the man is. He survived, alone, on a militarized, alien world. Imagine another six dozen people _just like him_. Then imagine if they became _organized_. I made a deal with the devil waking him up, and I'll have to answer for all the people he's killed. But let me make things right, son. You hand him over, I'll make sure you and your entire crew have clemency. No one will know that this happened."

Kirk nodded, holding off the deep breath, keeping his poker face in place. "He's in Engineering, sir. But I'll have him transferred to the transporter room right away."

The screen blinked out, and Kirk stood. "Do _not_ drop those shields," he ordered Sulu.

~*~*~*~*~

Reaper had faced the possibility of his death more times than he could reckon. At the hands of insurgents, crooks, perps, mutants, aliens, or time-traveling miners, all had given him a moment to wonder if this would be it. His long string of escapes, along with his life, would come to an end. Vaporization would kill him just as much as any other human. It would just take longer. An agonizing, humiliating _longer_.

He had so many regrets. Not the least of which was that he would not get one last chance to tell his sister that he loved her. That he was sorry for fighting with her. His daughter, too. He had told her that he believed in her, that she was great, but he wanted her to hear it one more time. His grandchildren, the great-grandkids, the bloodlines of old friends he had watched for so many years...

But he was standing here with Khan, instead. 

"As much as I hate being here," Khan said, still enveloped in that icy calm. "I want to know: what became of my child, my daughter?"

"She's brilliant, stubborn, and hard-headed as a mule." 

Both men could see Marcus talking to Kirk, hear Kirk desperately try to talk him down from destroying the _Enterprise_. They both knew that Marcus would not yield.

"Awake, and out of stasis, then?"

Reaper nodded. "Just lost her husband of thirty-seven years." Marcus was shut down his side of the conversation. "The grandkids turned out all right."

Jim turned to the bridge crew to apologize.

"I'm a grandfather?" Khan said, choking. His eyes gleamed, wet.

"Great-grandfather," Reaper corrected, and he found Khan staring at him with something unnamable. They locked eyes, waiting for the inevitable and... it didn't happen.

The broadcast of the bridge had cut off, but the sword of Damocles refused to fall. "Looks like the Captain somehow managed a stay of execution," Khan offered, face clearing of emotion. 

"We jumped out of the burning building. Now we have to worry about the fall."

~*~*~*~*~

"Captain, I _strongly_ object," Spock said, almost portraying an emotion as he dashed into the lift.

Kirk would have to rib him later. If there was a later. "To what? I haven't said anything yet."

"Since we cannot take the ship from the outside that only leaves taking it from within." They arrived at the Med Bay deck, and exited the turbo-lift. " And as a large boarding party would be detected it is optimal for you to take as few members of the crew as possible. You _will_ meet resistance which means taking personnel with advanced combat abilities and innate knowledge of that ship." The First Officer continued dogging Kirk's heels as they went on, and Jim swore he could feel Spock breathing down his neck. "This indicates that you plan to align yourself with Khan, the very man we were sent to kill. Moreover, you know you cannot trust him. That would mean you are considering asking Doctor McCoy, the only person capable of matching Khan, to go with you."

"I'm not going to ask Doctor McCoy. I'm going to ask Staff Sergeant John Grimm," Kirk answered, still walking. 

"You will reveal his secret to the entire crew in doing so. You would be breaking Doctor McCoy's trust when you made me promise not to share what was revealed," Spock continued. "I will go with you."

"No, I need you on the bridge."

Spock grabbed Kirk's shoulder, eyes wide. "I cannot allow you to do this. It is my function aboard this ship to advise in making the wisest decisions possible, something I firmly believe you are incapable of doing in this moment."

" _You're right,_ " Kirk spat as he whirled around. "What I'm about to do doesn't make any sense, it is _not_ logical. It is a _gut feeling_. Spock, I don't know what else to do. Nothing makes sense. Pike is dead, my ship is dying and the man I trusted more than anyone in the universe has been lying to me from day one. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I only know what I _can_ do: I can trust you to take care of the _Enterprise_ , and I can trust Bones to always come with me."

"He is an Augment. How can you be sure he won't decide to follow Khan?"

" _Never_." Another gut feeling. It came from years of comfortable trust, with Bones dragging his drunk ass home, or patching him up after a brawl, or just listening to him bitch about life. He had seen Bones lose his cool when people were stupid, before tending their wounds and giving advice or just an ear. That, in the face of death, he would choose to save a stranger instead of himself.

That he was outing Bones made him sick.

Spock nodded. "Before I go back to the Bridge, I would like to speak with Doctor McCoy myself."

"Fine. Let's get this show on the road."

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, life. Sometimes, life just sucks...


	8. Chapter 8

When Spock entered the Med Bay he saw Kirk immediately head towards Khan, and saw that the Doctor was at work, patching together a wounded crewman while organizing triage. He walked over, listening to Leonard McCoy snap orders like a relic from some ancient militia... which, on retrospect, he probably was.

McCoy's colors were their typical blue-green control, but he could see deep red through that leash, which was threadbare and fraying. 

"Doctor, we need to speak," Spock stated, putting a hand on McCoy's shoulder. The Doctor turned around, and Spock found himself taking a step back as he was met with blaring anger and protectiveness. "In private, if at all possible," he added. His promise not to out John Grimm was still in effect, even if the Captain would likely be breaking it soon.

"What, kid?" McCoy asked, but his voice was... different. Mixing with accents that Spock wasn't familiar with. Still, he followed as Spock walked to the Doctor's office and inside. It was the only privacy available. 

The Doctor's office was a place Spock rarely visited. A visual sweep of the room showed him a stone projectile point, covered in what appeared to be dried blood. A box with a DNA coded seal sat on the corner of the desk beside the stone point. There was also a large, cooing tribble in the middle of the old-fashioned blotter, and the Doctor barked a surprised laugh when he saw it.

"Well, hey now. How you doing?" he asked, walking to his desk and picking up the gray and cream colored tribble. His fingers combed through the coarse guard-hairs, and the tribble purred like an approaching storm. "Must have been a big surprise, huh? Good thing parts lost before the injection don't come back." He quirked a smile at Spock, then dropped it at the dire expression on the half-Vulcan's face. "What can I do for you?"

"I have been told that you were the one to drive Khan off Earth. How was he defeated?" Spock asked, voice cracking slightly as he took in the man before him. Doctor McCoy's body language was typically easy-going, even when he lost his temper and went into a rant. He walked with his shoulders bent, back bowed. His face was always quick, mobile, flashing with emotion. He talked with his hands, always with them out in the open and unclenched, waving to punctuate words or use his med-scanners. 

Now he was still, eyes distant and hollow. Spock felt he was staring at a great tree in winter, the wind driving away the few remaining leaves while the roots tried to decide if it was worth pushing out greenery the next spring. Because even if the tree knew that the winter would pass, the will to start anew was getting harder and harder to find.

If Spock had not seen the change himself, he would not have believed the two men to be the same. 

Like Spock himself, John Grimm did not waste time on anger or denials. "Khan divides the world into what is his, and what isn't. His crew is his, and if he really designed that ship out there? That's his, too. He'll do anything to get it back." Grimm smiled, but it didn't meet his eyes. His voice was laced with disgust. "He even tried to own me, and that's how I beat him. He didn't understand how I could side with regular humans and how my friends were willing to fight for me. Even at the cost of their lives. He couldn't understand that I was willing to do the same. He only gives a damn about what is his. That's how you beat him. Use what he wants against him. I hope we don't wind up with as many casualties this time."

Spock felt the soft whisper of the door opening behind him as the Captain arrived, reducing the space in the small room once more.

"Sergeant," Kirk began, before he turned and saw that the Doctor was still holding the tribble. The same tribble that cooed, purred and writhed in something like joy. 

"Is that _Rover_?"

Spock lifted an eyebrow as Grimm's smile found his eyes, turning from a twisted mockery of the Doctor into something far more familiar. "Yes. I... thought you might have questions, and there are precious few answers. Khan's blood can work miracles." Rover wriggled, and McCoy's real smile widened. "Nice to see mine _can_ do the same, without making monsters."

The Captain's jaw flopped open and shut, before closing and nodding. Spock felt a warm flush of pink awe roll over Kirk, before it was choked off. 

"I'm taking Khan to that ship. I need you to watch my back." Kirk's solemn eyes met Grimm's. Then he slapped Spock on the shoulder. "My First Officer here will think of a good idea for why you're coming along." 

Spock glared. 

"Jim- you can't seriously want me to-" Grimm-McCoy said, (and Spock wasn't sure how he should designate the man at that moment. Neither and both seemed appropriate.) "Dammit. I'm a doctor. They need me here." His voice turned pleading. "I haven't been spec ops in over two hundred years." He put down the tribble giving it one last stroke. "I haven't taken a life in violence in almost a hundred." He met the Captain's gaze, and Spock could feel the cold wind rattle the tree to its core. "Don't ask this of me."

So that was who he was, Spock thought. The name itself didn't matter. He was a man born of the most violent period of human history, but he had chosen peace. His reasons for doing so were immaterial, but Spock finally knew who was in front of him.

"Sergeant," Kirk began, then stopped. " _Bones._ The _Enterprise_ needs you. _I_ need you. Are you going to come with me or not?"

~*~*~*~*~

Len didn't allow himself to think much about what was happening. He had gotten too damn good at it over the years; learning to put worry, fear and anxiety into a little box until he could cope later was a survival skill.

Hence why he wasn't screaming about being thrown into a debris field between two ships in only an EVA suit with weak maneuvering thrusters.

He hated space. He had hated transporters ever since seeing a man's ass and his body part ways as a child. He had hated Mars since his parents and his team had died grisly, miserable deaths there. He had almost died of vacuum exposure in a shuttle accident after his step-daughter's wedding; he had experienced firsthand what depressurization did to himself and the other passengers. 

On top of that, he had treated dozens, if not hundreds, of space related injuries while on the _Enterprise_.

The _Vengence_ hung against the backdrop of the moon like a nightmare of doom as John fought to shift headspace into being Reaper again. He had done hundreds of combat drops from helicopters and airplanes before, but now he had to follow the stupid glowing lines on his HUD. 

And of course they had to dodge space junk. Khan appeared to have few difficulties, and John felt like he was dancing through a mine field with a drunken elephant with their minimal thrusters and- "Whoa, Jim, you're way off course!"

And of course Khan, who had managed to avoid huge chunks of damaged ship slammed head first into fragment of bulkhead and disappeared off John's HUD. 

" _Did we lose Khan?_ " Jim asked. 

John almost snarled in frustration because while he wanted the demon dead he had to pick the worst moment-

Several fragments of grating hung before him, shattered but with enough space for John to fit through as he angled the thrusters to allow him-

" _Sergeant_ ," Spock said, and John rolled his eyes at Spock's grand plan to conceal his identity: pretend he was security officer John Grim and try to create an electronic history for him later. That didn't matter, though. " _The Captain has lost his HUD and is off course-_ "

He punched the jets, firing off towards Jim. "I see you, Jim, you're on my two o'clock, ahead one fifty meters."

" _And on my one_ ," Khan answered, appearing from the side. Together, they flanked Jim to guide him towards the _Vengence_.   
_Dear god we're going to splat like flies on a windshield-_ And he really needed to get onto Spock about that stupid countdown. Or was it Spock? Didn't matter. He could damn well see that he was about to splat-

The door opened, and John managed to roll with the hit on the _Vengence_ 's deck as he and the other two men slid to a stop in front of control panel, where a very confused Montgomery Scott looked on. 

"And who the hell might that be?"

~*~*~*~*~

"I have that transmission for you," Nyota said, voice tight. Spock could feel it on the bridge, the sense of tension mixed with violet optimism that their Captain could pull yet another miracle out of his posterior. Spock knew that this faith was illogical. Nonetheless he felt it infect him as well.

"On screen. Please," Spock requested. He wondered if this was cheating; Kirk would be proud. However, while he had ideas of how to deal with Khan, there was one nagging issue he had to put to rest. 

"Standby."

The image was pixilated, with just a faint lag. Given the astronomical distances involved, he was grateful to be getting any signal at all. All around him the bridge crew went quiet as an aged, wizened Vulcan took center view on the screen. Some of the newer crew were blatantly comparing himself to the Vulcan he faced.

"Mister Spock," the elder said, by way of greeting. His voice was calm but warm, not bothering to hide his query or curiosity. Spock wondered if he would ever be that comfortable expressing his sentiments.

"Mister Spock."

The two regarded each other over the distance of years, experience and universes. Spock could not find it in himself to regret that the elder Spock had told him to go with what felt right. He had... _enjoyed_... his time on the _Enterprise_. Yet the other Spock was weighed down by regrets and memories that Spock had feared to ask about. More to the point, the other Spock had cut him off by saying he would not reveal any 'spoilers'. Asking him here was a breach of his own vow... but then again, cheating was only cheating when you were playing a game. This was deadly serious.

Oddly enough, now that he thought about it, the elder Spock's emotional resonance had felt eerily similar to Doctor McCoy's.

"I will be brief." He paused. Two questions, but he had the answer to one. He just had to know... "Can I trust Staff Sergeant John 'Reaper' Grimm? Will be betray us to the man named Khan Noonien Singh?" 

The other Spock's mouth twitched. They both knew this was a violation of his promise. "To your second question, the answer is never. You may trust Grimm." His lips twitched almost to a smile. "My friendship with Captain Kirk defined me. Yet the friendship that sustained me, that brought me through the valley of the shadow of death, was with a man called 'Reaper.'" The man looked away. "You may trust him, Spock. Not just with your life, but with your _katra_ as well."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Khan, this is Scotty. Scotty, Khan. Grimm, Scotty. Scotty, this is Sergeant Grimm," Kirk said, by way of introduction to the two men with him. He didn't need to see it to know that Bones was rolling his eyes. He did notice how fast Khan recovered, and he turned to see that Bones was on his feet as well.

That was when he realized Bones was staring at him-

Oh. His helmet.

Bones jaw locked, and if this was a normal day on the Enterprise he could have expected a lecture. Yet they didn't have time, and he couldn't afford to be the mother hen from hell right then. Or even recognizably Bones.

"They'll know we're here," he said, voice coming out as a flat gravel and glass mixed with whiskey. "Weapons, Captain."

Kirk saw Khan smirk, and Scotty blinked as he eyed Bones as Kirk shed his suit and got out the phasers. Bones had another holster, this one strapped to his leg. Kirk blinked. He _almost_ recognized the model. 

Bones didn't say anything as Scotty kept eying him, just gave him a glare that had the engineer stepping backwards. 

"It's locked to stun," Kirk told Khan as he handed out phasers. The gun (looked like an old fashioned solid projectile weapon) stayed holstered to Bone's leg. He saw Khan make a glance at it.

"Theirs won't be."

"Then don't get hit." Kirk could feel Scotty's confusion, and it was really frustrating that he had to leave Scotty in the dark. He would need a few hours, a diagram, a map, and two bottles out of Bones' stash to make heads or tails of this and that was time they just didn't have. 

"Khan's on point?" Grimm asked, and Kirk had to suppress another shudder at the voice before nodding, and Khan eased into a crouch, phaser down, as naturally as breathing.

Bones took his phaser, checked it over, and made all of it look practiced. It looked about as natural to Jim as a tap-dancing Klingon.

"Grimm," Scotty asked after a moment as they scurried through the _Vengence_ 's labyrinthine innards, "Anyone ever tell you you're a dead ringer for Doctor McCoy?"

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sick again. Ah, my luck. I am sorry for the delay.


	9. Chapter 9

John Grimm didn't remember much of those first few days after he had carried Sam out of the UAC Nevada facility. He had been a trained soldier, but he doubted he could ever be prepared for mutants killing his team, the wholesale slaughter of innocents, or the CO he trusted turning and becoming a monster. Added to the mix was that the C-24 was still in the process of changing him, and he was a mess. His senses had overloaded his brain, his muscles shattered his bones, before both brain and bones had improved to match. He had been lost, nearly delirious with worry about Sam, and consumed by pain and almost insatiable hunger.

Khan had shown up at the hospital where Sam was, and seduced him with the promise of a way to heal Sam so that she could walk again, and guidance and understanding on how his body had changed. With Khan's help, he started exploring the full limits of his new abilities. On top of that, he had even...

Len shook himself free of those memories. He had thought he was free of Khan for two centuries. Damn it.

"They're about to have full power and _we're-_ " Scotty started, when Len whirled around, slapping his hand over Scotty's mouth and forcing him into a wall.

"Keep your mouth _shut_ ," he hissed. "Every time you open your goddamn mouth you give away our position!"

Scotty's eyes went huge, and Len again brought himself back to the present; they weren't on Mars and this wasn't the Kid. Scotty wasn't a professional. But they couldn't be distracted, or stopped. Not with the _Enterprise_ , and her crew, at stake. 

"The turbo lifts are easily tracked and Marcus would have us in a cage," Khan said, but his tone was pleased at Len's show as he paused to tap on a terminal. "Listen to Grimm. Too much talking is a risk. This corridor runs parallel to the engine room. They can't discharge their weapons here without destabilizing the warp core which gives us the advantage." 

Scotty tossed Jim a look and Jim glanced back and forth between Khan and Grimm. Grimm dropped back to cover their rear, allowing his senses to expand and take in the small, ever-present noises of a ship. He could hear heartbeats, faint and blending with the hum of the engines. There weren't many; less than a dozen. Compared to the thriving, seething noise of the _Enterprise_ was like walking through a graveyard.

"Why so small a crew?" Grimm asked, skipping the sibilants and almost too low to be heard. 

"The ship is designed to be flown by a minimal crew, one if necessary," Khan answered in the same tone. He was striding like a king through his castle, and Grimm wanted to knock that smirk off his face. 

"You designed this ship specifically so you could steal it," Grimm whispered, staring at Khan's back. Dear god, they were playing right into his hands-

The first punch caught John off guard. It didn't even snap his head to the side, but it made him blink and blew the rust off reflexes that were at least twenty years unused. The man- a good ten centimeters taller and built like an old-fashioned tank- went down under a fist to the solar plexus. Jim was flailing- the kid was a street fighter, no finesse- and John cut in, grabbing Jim's dance partner and using a sleeper hold to put the man on the deck. Beside him, Scotty was ducking, trying to avoid a third man, and didn't see the fourth. John shoved Scotty back, taking the blow to his side and grunting from the impact. He stole a move from Spock's book and used a nerve pinch to put the goon down-

And Khan grabbed number four, snapping his neck, and the fight was over.

John counted three unconscious forms around them, still breathing, hearts beating away. One man with his head on sideways. Beyond him, were two more dead soldiers.

At the far end was the man that Khan had kicked, chest caved in, lungs whistling as his lungs filled with blood. 

Len trotted forward, reaching for his med kit-

"We don't have _time_ for that, you fool," Khan sneered. "Leave him."

Len's muscles locked. 

"Grimm, come on," Kirk murmured, putting a hand on Len's elbow. "We have to go." 

"Damn you _both_ ," Len snarled. Jim staggered away, reeling back from the look on Len's face. Len's hands shook as he walked forwards, reaching for his side arm and letting the DNA scanner acknowledge his identity. 

If they could get this man to the Med Bay, with competent doctors, he could be saved. Didn't matter who he was; Len had seen that look on his face a hundred, a thousand times. The look of a man who knew he was dying and was terrified, knew he was lost, struggling for one more breath. He knew it from the inside out.

He brought up silencer mode on his weapon. "I'm sorry," he said, meeting the dying man's gaze. The quick double-tap to the head ended his pain.

Khan clapped. "Bravo." He sneered as Len brought his eyes up to meet Khan's. "Nice to know you're not a complete waste." Len's trigger finger tightened on his Lawgiver, then he shoved it into his thigh holster. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears; they had a mission to complete no matter if he wanted to find a chainsaw and hack Khan in to bleeding lumps. 

Jim, though...

Jim's face was bone white, and Scotty's jaw was slack.

Khan took off, and Bones grabbed his phaser as they moved out of the Engineering corridor. 

"Well, that answers that," he heard Scotty mutter. "He surely couldn't be Doctor McCoy."

~*~*~*~*~

_Bones just killed someone._

Jim shoved the thought away; they had a ship to hijack and a mutiny to commit. 

"Where'd they go?" Scotty asked as the two Augments disappeared into the maze of hardware surrounding them.

"Shit." He couldn't see anyone ahead or behind, but he turned to Scotty. "The moment we get to the Bridge, I need you to drop him."

"Who? Grimm or Khan? I thought they were helping us?" Scotty asked, baffled. 

"We can trust Grimm." _I know I can. I have to believe that._ "But I'm pretty sure we're helping Khan, not the other way around."

Bones was using a _Lawgiver_. Weapons that hadn't been manufactured in over a hundred years, tailored to be usable only to by a group of cowboy cops during the most brutal, fascist period in Earth history. Bones killed someone and used a _Lawgiver_ to do it. Those thoughts ran on a little wheel, squeaking and scrabbling under the rest. 

A soft footfall drew his attention, and Bones was there, eyebrow lifted in silent admonition. No talking. Right.

They continued on, leapfrogging through cover to get to the Bridge. There was only one security guard outside the door, and he was stunned before he could raise any kind of alert. Khan cut through the security codes on the door and they strode in, putting down the completely human, male crew. No aliens, no women. Marcus had more issues than just being a warmonger, it seemed.

Carol Marcus planted her elbow into her captor's face, taking him down.

None got to their weapons, and the Admiral was quickly surrounded. Kirk stared at him, before glancing up at Scotty, giving him a nod-

And he felt an arm like steel vice clench down around his throat, another hand on the back of his head tilting it- god he couldn't breathe-

Jim didn't know if he had been able to get any sound out, but he could feel Khan's deep, shuddering laugh against his neck. 

"Let him go," Bones growled, and Jim was dragged around to look at him, to where he stood by Marcus, Scotty and Carol. Carol's eyes were huge, impossibly blue in the dim light, while Scotty's jaw was hanging. The Admiral appeared unmoved, but he was sitting and weaponless- even more of a bystander than his daughter. He knew it, too, his jaw working as his eyes darted about, trying to find something to use.

"I don't think I will. You see, Reaper, I only want to take my family and go. You want to stop me," Khan said, and Kirk thought he might have been talking about his favorite football team for all the worry he conveyed. "Yet I seem to recall you have this," and he tightened his grip, and Jim saw starry blackness at the borders of his vision, "little weakness. You care about these sheep. I still remember killing your oh so intelligent little tech friend. He cried, you know. And your _android_. Did you like seeing it shatter? Do you remember it apologizing for not being able to fight me when I reprogrammed it? How many more will you see die?" Jim could feel Khan's smile against his ear. "You know I like killing them. Yet this one, oh, _this one_ ," Jim felt his neck tilt, tried to fight, felt the muscles, bones and ligaments draw out to the point of snapping. "This one is _special_."

The words echoed down a long tube. Jim's lungs were on fire.

"Khan, your crew is still on the _Enterprise_. You give Jim back to me, you can have them and this ship," Bones said, voice edging away from calm. "I don't give a damn if you take it and leave the Sol system. Leave and don't come back. I won't follow. You have my word on it."

"I want the child you stole from me."

"She might disagree. She's ornery, that one. She's tougher than both of us put together and kicks like a mule."

"Indeed. Your influence, no doubt. No. You mentioned great-grandchildren. I want them. Give them to me and I won't fire on Starfleet Headquarters after I destroy the _Enterprise_ ," Khan whispered, a silky, cruel promise.

Jim couldn't stand it anymore. Then his knees gave out.

"I'm stunned you would suggest that," Bones answered. The Lawgiver was pointed at Khan and himself, and Jim thought he could see the display flicker as everything went gray. 

"That I would demand-"

"I said _stun_."

Bones pulled the trigger, the bolt of energy sizzling past Jim's ear to strike Khan. He could feel the charge hit the Augment, muscles locking in place and convulsing, loosening his grip. Jim struggled, dragging out reserves as he writhed forward, falling into Bones' arms.

God it felt good to have that asshole mutter something about damn fool idiots not knowing that Khan heard Jim's stupid plan to stun him. Bones could have kept going, called him every name in the book, so long as Jim could just keep right on _breathing_.

Then Khan howled, diving at Bones, who shoved Jim aside as they rolled, Khan grabbing Bones' wrist and slamming his hand against the deck. They grappled, Bones managing to pistol whip Khan who responded with a punch across the face.

He saw Carol Marcus run forward; not to join the fight, but to get to the navigator's chair. Her slim, nimble fingers danced over the console, only half watching it as she kept her gaze on the fight.

The Admiral had gotten up, dashing towards the weapons' locker as Scotty came over to help Kirk to his feet.

"Carol," Jim tried to say, but it came out as a broken grunt.

"Help me- all of the ship's controls are routed through the Bridge-"

Scotty's jaw fell as his eyes went wide, and he dropped Kirk to hit the helmsman's spot, his own fingers drumming as they worked. 

They heard the weapons' locker close, and Jim looked up to see Khan and Bones' brawl come back their way as Khan smashed Bones through the Captain's chair... and Bones sprang back to his feet like it was nothing, returning the hit with two closed fists, the Lawgiver thrown to the floor.

Then Admiral Marcus was aiming a phaser at them. Wait.

At Jim. The moment stretched into an eternity, looking up at a man who looked down at him like he was just an insect to smash. No emotion, not even anger. Just distraction. No time to move, no time to think of some clever plan-

And Bones was there. Fast, faster than humanly possible, and Jim stared at his back as he heard the phaser discharge.

The first bolt hit Bones in the gut, sending him down to one knee. The next bolt caught his shoulder, the third hit his chest, and Jim almost wasn't fast enough to catch him. 

" _No_." Bones was heavy; he had never realized Bones was so heavy. He had never had to carry the other man before. It was always the other way around.

Bones' lungs gurgled, wheezed; Jim saw the holes burned through his body by the high-powered blast. The man's face was bloodless, he smelled cooked, and Jim couldn't think. _He didn't want to be here. I killed him. He didn't even want to be here and it's my fault that he's..._

He didn't see Khan get the Lawgiver, but he did notice when Marcus stopped firing. Khan had the weapon trained on Carol.

"Hands in the air, Ms. Marcus," Khan said through gritted teeth. "Admiral, you and I both know that fathers tend to feel quite strongly about the safety of their daughters. I want my crew returned to me. Do this, and yours might live."

Bones stopped breathing, body going limp in Jim's arms. He desperately felt around the man's neck, trying to find a pulse. 

Nothing. There wasn't even any blood; it had all cauterized. 

_He didn't want to go into space, couldn't leave me behind and now I've killed him._

Scotty continued tapping the console, but Jim wasn't paying attention. All he noticed was the body in his arms. Not breathing, not moving, and it was impossible. Wrong. 

Then the world dissolved in a haze of sparkles.

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I managed to include some actual ho yay. Did I mention that most of this story is pre-slash? I think I may have actually kicked this last cold. After two months, I don't feel like crap. Wonders never cease.
> 
> And, if I haven't said it, thank everyone who gave kudos, commented, or bookmarked. I'm glad you enjoyed it. With any luck this shouldn't be too much longer, though I'm not sure how much. Hopefully withing four to five more chapters at most.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter will make references to my other story in this series, Family History. A few points might be missed if you haven't read that one, but I don't feel it is utterly necessary to understand this chapter.

Spock fought to contain his relief, and his expectations, when he had heard that three _Enterprise_ crewmen and one stranger had beamed aboard from the _Vengeance_. 

Three people had left, to regain one. The _Vengeance_ was reading inert, the weapons and engines offline, with almost no life signs remaining. Logically he knew that without facts, he had no reason to feel reassured. He knew that this mission was high-risk, practically suicidal, but that it was perhaps their only way to survive. 

Hope was a cruel emotion. 

Especially when it was thwarted four meters down the hall from the Transporter room, by the low wail of loss mixed with dull, deep gray. It drowned out everything else, powerful enough to almost knock him back, and Spock knew that something terrible had happened. 

He was, unfortunately, right.

He was followed in by a squad of security, armed with phasers and they all stopped to stare helplessly at the unconscious form of Admiral Marcus. Mr. Scott was in shock, a blank white wall of it and his mind an intermittent buzz of disbelief. Carol Marcus stood over her father, rubbing her knuckles and jaw. Her face was blank, a heavy fist choking off her emotions. They leaked through the cracks, a lurid orange.

The Captain, though... He had a phaser pointed at Marcus, and he was the source of the black loss that had tried to sweep Spock away. He was half surprised that the rest of the crew did not stagger under its weight.

"Captain," Spock asked, approaching cautiously. The Captain looked up, slowly, but his eyes were blank. There were obvious signs of battle on him: bruises around his neck and face, blood leaking from his left eyebrow. Yet where he had seen the Captain shrug off previous injuries like they were nothing, always with a smile and a laugh, a comment that Bones would get it patched up-

"Captain, was your mission successful? You have Admiral Marcus captive but-"

"Khan's still on the _Vengeance_ ," he answered. His gaze was somewhere above Spock's right shoulder.

"Aye, but he'll need a good ten, fifteen minutes to get the controls working again," Scotty added. Carol looked up to Spock, giving him a choppy nod.

"And I locked out his weapons. It would be a permanent lock, but-"

"Khan helped design the ship, apparently," Mr. Scott said, finishing her sentence. "If anyone can find a work-around, he can." 

"Scotty." The Captain's voice was flat. "Why wasn't," and he stopped, pursing his lips. "Why wasn't Sergeant Grimm transported with us?" he asked, putting the phaser in his pants to rub his hands together. Hands, Spock noted, that were bruised, cut, and covered in rust-red splotches. 

"Captain, I didn't have time for a specific lock. I just had to grab all the life signs in the room that weren't Khan."

"You imply then that-"

"Sergeant Grimm is dead," the Captain finished, and Spock had to wonder why those words seemed wrong. Somehow the idea of the Doctor being dead seemed impossible. It just wasn't true.

"Are you sure?"

Blue eyes met his, and Spock almost foundered under a slurry of helpless rage and guilt. "Admiral Marcus had his phaser set to kill, and he shot Bo - _Grimm_ three times. I couldn't find a pulse." He inhaled, nostrils flaring as he turned towards the unconscious man. "Security Chief, get this bastard out of my sight. He is under arrest for conspiracy against the Federation, firing upon a Federation vessel," he took a deep breath as his voice broke, "and murder." 

They did as they were bid, literally dragging the unconscious man out of the transporter room. 

"Captain, orders?"

Jim stood there, eyes distant. Spock opened his mouth- if the Captain was emotionally compromised, he needed to take over command and do it now- but Jim turned to him.

"Mister Spock, Khan wants his crew back. How do we use that against him?"

Spock paused. His original idea had involved Doctor McCoy, but now that the Doctor was... "Doctor Marcus, Mister Scott, report to the weapons' bay with the rest of the senior engineering and medical staff. "

Mr. Scott left without a word, but Doctor Marcus lingered. "You called that man, the one my father shot, by a different name," she said, rubbing her bruised arms. "But that was Doctor McCoy, wasn't it? No one else would have been strong enough to compete with an Augment."

"I think you're needed in the weapons' bay, Doctor Marcus," the Captain responded with a faint smile, one that got nowhere near his eyes. "We can discuss this later."

"I- Captain," she started, putting one hand on his arm, then taking it off. "Jim-"

"Go, Doctor."

She nodded, heading towards the door. Spock followed her with his eyes; he kept them on the door when the Captain's breathing turned to a sob. 

"Y'know, I don't even know who his daughter really is," Kirk muttered. Spock turned to see his face, dry, but his fists were clenched. "She... hell. We survive, I got to tell her that her dad is dead." His breathing stuttered. "Her name is Joanna. Do you think that's her real name?"

Spock opened his mouth. Then shut it again. "Logically, I don't know. Yet," he paused. "My gut says that it is."

~*~*~*~*~

John woke up to pain.

The bridge of _Vengeance_ came into view abruptly, its dark lighting and sinister lines covered in dents and holes from the fight; all of it came into view with a snap.

Much like the sound of his bones being broken.

Khan was standing over him, his grin manic as he stomped John's legs. They cracked, shattering under the force as John tried to move, roll, get away.

"You are a fool," Khan said, voice calm. He continued his attack, moving up to John's knees. John swung around, but Khan danced over the clumsy blow and down, and with a loud pop and crack of cartilage.

"You could have stood with me," Khan declared. His heel came down again, this time on John's pelvis. John grunted as he felt the bone break, splinters lodging into his flesh. "You could have been part of a family. Always by my side." 

John couldn't really answer; he was focusing too hard on not screaming, on trying to crawl arm over arm to get away. 

Khan knew exactly what he was doing; knew his body almost as well as John did himself. In those first weeks and months after Olduvai, when John had been so desperate for help, they had explored the limits of his healing. They surmised that something that would instantly kill would affect him like anyone else: complete and utter immolation, beheading, or several high velocity rounds to the head and the heart. Anything else was just a matter of time. Yet there _were_ limits. Soft tissue damage healed instantly. Organ damage took slightly longer. Bones took the longest, owing to the need to steal minerals from the rest of his skeleton and they would be brittle afterwards until he could find a high-mineral food source (and the pica afterwards was brutal.) His healing abilities would blow through his fat reserves before depleting his muscle density. If he still had damage, his healing would slow, but not stop; he appeared for all intents and purposes to be dead until his body healed enough for him to awaken and go searching for food. 

Anything would do. The last time it had happened he had barely stopped himself from trying to eat the dead around him. ( _Not a monster, no, never that._ )

"Did I not give you _everything_? A home? Safety? Acceptance?" Khan stepped up John's spine. "We would have made this world into an _Eden_. Our children would have ruled as kings and queens." His ribs crunched. "And then you threw it all into my _face?_ "

"Yeah, first little argument and there goes the marriage," John grunted as he tried to keep moving, scanning, looking for an exit.

There.

"You alone might have been my equal. Yet you threw it all away. For what? Those _sheep_?" Khan stepped on his shoulder. 

There was a phaser just a few centimeters away. Just had to concentrate through the ache of healing, through the burning in his gut.  
"For people, you asshole." He kept reaching. Black spots tangoed before his eyes. "Because they're _people_."

His fingers brushed the grip of the phaser-

Khan's boot fell on his neck. "And you and I could have been gods."

~*~*~*~*~

When Khan appeared on screen, his face was as calm as blood streaked marble.

" _Now, Spock, Kirk, you have something I want_ ," he said, just noise, lacking the emotional resonance of an actual physical presence.

Vulcans were not true telepaths, in the sense that they could pick thoughts from a mind without physical contact. Touch, or at least immediate proximity, was needed to pick up even the noise and shading of another's mind. Yet he had always been able to tell when someone's ideation _stopped_.

Khan held the Doctor's broken and battered body before the view screen, which fell and twisted in places where no body was meant to bend. Yet despite the sight of Khan waving him like some ancient victory flag... Spock could not quite come to believe that the other man was _dead_.

" _Your wolfhound is defeated. Now, you drop your feeble excuse for shields and allow me to beam my torpedoes back to where they belong._ "

Shields that Mr. Scott had just stored to fifteen percent; they would not survive more than one point three hits from standard photon torpedoes, let alone whatever advanced weaponry that the Vengeance was carrying. 

To Spock's side, he saw Kirk frown. "We do that and we're helpless. We give up those torpedoes and you destroy us as soon as they are in your weapons' bay."

" _If you do not comply I will target your life support systems,_ " Khan replied. Around him, Spock could feel yellow-brown, hissing fear. Yet beneath it was outrage. Spock, to his surprise, found he shared it. " _Your crew needs oxygen to survive. My crew are in sealed units._ " His lips twisted into a sneer. " _I will then come over in a shuttle after your crew has suffocated and shut down your shields. You have no recourse here, Captain, and no options. You will return my crew to me._ "

Spock and Kirk shared a glance, and Spock had a split second to sort through it all. Rage and calculation mixed into a dull purple that slopped over guilt, guilt, _guilt_ and tattered dun despair. To the Captain's credit, Spock noted that none of this made it to his face.

Khan was not bothering to watch them; in fact, he seemed bored and had turned his attention to the firearm he was holding. Projectile weapons had been in frequent use in Earth's past, but this was a particularly famous type. 

"We will comply," Spock said, before glancing at Kirk and lifting a brow. 

Kirk didn't look back at him. "Wait."

 _"You are hardly in any position to make demands, Captain,_ " Khan drawled. He glanced down to where he had dropped the Doctor's body, out of view. Behind him, the Vengeance's bridge looked like a war zone.

"Even if you plan to blow us the fuck up, and I have no doubt that you do," the Captain said, and Spock felt a wave of desperation roll of him that had nothing to do with their imminent doom, "Give us back John's body."

" _And why should I allow you this ridiculous moment of sentimentality, Captain?_ "

"He's-" and Kirk choked, and Spock snapped his gaze to the Captain's face. "He's-"

"John Grimm is a respected member of this crew," Spock said, cutting in. He was grateful that the Captain had not taken the Conn just yet. "And someone we all considered a friend. His place is here, no matter the outcome."

" _Semper Fi,_ " Khan murmured. " _Very well. I will return his corpse. Now... shall we begin?_ "

The Captain nodded, and Sulu dropped the shields, allowing the torpedoes to be transported away. 

" _If these are not my torpedoes, Captain, Spock, I_ will _know it_ ," Khan murmured as he looked at his display, fingers still lovingly gripping the weapon in his left hand. Spock blinked at it before turning to the Captain.

"Is that what I think it is?" 

"Yeah."

"How did he get a-"

"Bones had it."

"But how did the Doctor-"

"Damn if I know, Spock."

~*~*~*~*~

Sounds usually filtered in first. John could hear the steady beeps and whistles of the Vengeance's bridge around him, feel the artificially warmed, dry air coming up from a vent under his cheek. His body still crackled with pain as he knit himself back together, but he could hear voices.

Khan, speaking to the _Enterprise_ , bargaining for his crew back. Of course, he knew Khan would never allow the _Enterprise_ to live. Despite his brilliance, Khan subscribed to a very simple philosophy: if he couldn't eat it, fuck it, or piss on it, he would burn it down.

"Oh, never fear, Captain. I will keep my end of the bargain. You will have your friend's corpse soon enough."

John's belly burned with hunger pains as he twisted to get his legs under him. Khan was there. Couldn't show weakness. Couldn't let Khan believe John had given up. _Couldn't let him win_.

He looked up... into the sights of his own Lawgiver.

"I will give you one last chance, Reaper. Tell me where my children are. I will give them their proper place in this universe. Do not, and I will kill you."

" _My_ daughter, _my_ kids, wouldn't give you the fuckin' time of day, you piece of shit." Keep the guy talking. Stall for time. "They survived C-24. That kinda means _no genocidal tendencies_ , which is why you couldn't use it to begin with."

Khan _snarled._ "They are _mine_. You have no right-"

"I'm their goddamn Papaw. I have _every fucking right!_ "

The Augment's face contorted before reaching for the safety, and for the audio on the com channel. "So be it."

Forty years ago, a very popular series of light novels were written about the exploits of the Judges of Mega City One. Up until the publication of those novels, most had treated the Judges of the Mega Cities as nothing more than goons with guns. Then David Grayson had begun writing his highly historically accurate series that portrayed the Judges as a group of people attempting to bring order to a world on the edge of self-destruction. The Judges, their world went from being a barely remembered nightmare to well known pop-cultural symbol.

Then the original author died, and no new books were written. 

Khan would not have had time to read a series of pop novels in the past year. 

Which made the sound of John's Lawgiver exploding, and taking off Khan's left hand in a chunky, runny mess, all the more satisfying.

 

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have rewritten this particular chapter numerous times, which contributed to how late it came out. I also will probably be two to three weeks with the next one, due to preparing for a pretty important job interview in about a week. So this will be a not-priority, but will still get worked on because Stress Relief is Necessary. 
> 
> Thank you, everyone who has left kudos or reviews. And I am sorry for my consistent misspelling of Vengeance. My spell check would squiggle it, but it just looked wrong to add that 'a' there. Then my unofficial beta-man pointed it out. Ugh. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

_Khan didn't know._

That Khan, the former dictator of a quarter of the Earth, would be brought low because he couldn't be arsed to enjoy some pop-culture sent a stab of satisfaction through Jim that had him grinning viciously. 

Across the bridge, a smattering of applause rang out. Spock glared, and even that was cut off when Khan cut the transmission and the _Enterprise_ shuddered in the face of more missile fire. Alarms went off as the crew started rattling off the new damage.

"All hands," Spock said, voice breaking with panic as he sat down in the Captain's chair. "Brace for imminent proximity detonation!"

There was an endless, quiet moment a breathe before the torpedoes exploded, making the deck lurch like a drunk and Jim fell, head colliding with the metal of the deck, vision blotting out in a haze of white before creeping back into focus. Around him the crew were twittering, making noises that didn't quite make sense until he realized what was going on. The engines were down. They had no power. 

"Captain, are you all right?" He could almost imagine it was Bones saying it... but no, he couldn't. Bones was dead. 

Dead, because Jim had gotten him killed. 

"Captain?"

"I'm good," Jim said, rolling to his knees and then to his feet. "I- stay here. I'm heading down to Engineering." He took one last look at the Bridge, and at Spock. "You're where you should be. Keep her alive, Spock."

"Captain!"

He flashed his First Officer a smile, aware that it came nowhere close to his eyes as he strode to the turbo lift. He didn't know if would ever see the bridge and her crew again. In all honesty, he didn't know if he deserved to.

~*~*~*~*~

John clung to consciousness with teeth and toenails, forcing air in and out of his lungs, tasting the smoke overwhelming the air-scrubbers. He felt the torn muscle and bone as cold-and-hot pools under his skin, and pain lanced up and down his spine whenever he tried to move.

Khan howled, barely audible above the klaxons warning that the ship was irreparably damaged. 

_The torpedoes. Spock armed the damned_ torpedoes. 

"Set destination," said the voice around the roar, tuning in and out, and John shook his head, trying to clear it. " _Star Fleet Headquarters!_ "

"Stop, you sonuvabitch," John rasped, forcing his hands under him, then his knees, reaching up to grab the navigator's chair. " _Stop_."

Khan glared at him, his pale eyes above a sneer as the ship's computer asked for him to confirm destination. 

"Confirm."

"God dammit, Khan, _Joanna's there!_ " He tried to get up, but his bones hadn't finished healing and John collapsed against the chair, sliding to the floor and against the body of the former navigator. " _Your daughter is a Starfleet officer!_ She's at HQ! _STOP!_ "

Khan turned to him, face twisted in disbelief. 

"Her name is Joanna, she's a commodore, and she's _there_ , investigating the shit _you_ pulled," John gasped, ragged.

He was surrounded by the smell of burned, dead flesh. "Khan, I beg you-" he said, voice breaking both with his own pain and desperate worry for his child. His baby girl. He got his feet under him and _lunged_.

~*~*~*~*~

Jim was on fire.

 _At over 30 Gy, symptoms start within minutes,_ Bones helpfully told him. 

_Shit,_ Jim answered. _You always have to be so cheerful._

He knew the schematics of the reactor core; he had memorized the _Enterprise's_ blueprints almost as soon as she was given to him. He knew exactly how long he had to crawl, putting one hand and one knee in front of the other as he tripped over hurdles and hauled himself over cables to make it to the top. Nausea roiled through his stomach, and he shook his head as his eyes lost focus. 

_The fever's starting_ , Bones added, when Jim felt the heat start boiling up from the inside. Blood was already running out of his nose. He could feel his uniform scorch his skin, and felt it stick and sear as he reached his destination. He staggered, then reminded himself that all he had to do was shove the bottom core back into place. Jim Kirk's greatest skill was hitting things. He could bludgeon his way through this.

_You aren't here to put me back together. So shut up._

His muscles weren't just protesting, they were committing acts of terrorism as he kept moving, kicking. Trying to fling his body weight into moving something almost as big as he was.

_You know I would be there if I could._

"Yeah, and you aren't," Jim said aloud, coughing up and spitting a wad of blood. It was getting harder to make his body obey him. "And it's my goddamn fault."

_I lied about who I was. I lied about everything._

Anger welled up. Bones had been his _best friend_ \- the guy who had his back, the guy he trusted to always be there even with Jim screwed up- and Bones was gone. Jim lashed out with everything he had left: his anger at the death of Pike, his guilt of using Bones' loyalty against him, his fear for his crew. The core realigned itself with a growl.

All of his life, Jim had been left behind. Left by his father, his mother, his brother Sam. No one stuck around, no one really seemed to care until some old grizzled guy showed up and dared him to be greater. And Jim had risen to the occasion, but Pike hadn't belonged to him, not really.

Then came someone who had finally refused to just walk away.

Bones had been assigned as his roommate after four tries to pair Jim up had wound up with him almost expelled. Bones' skin was simply too tough, and his heart too kind, to allow Jim's asshole attitude to bother him. He didn't ask about the _Kelvin_ , want to 'talk about it' or treat him as anything but that annoying infant he had to share a room with. He let Jim be Jim, until Jim _did_ want to talk about it, trusted his friend enough to feel that he wouldn't be judged. Even when the story came in pieces, in excuses and drunken slurring, he listened. 

He refused to leave Jim behind when it would have been far easier to do so, even dragging him on board the _Enterprise_ at risk of his own career.

_I would have understood_ , he wanted to tell Bones. _You didn't care about my past. Why would I care about yours?_

_And there you go again, thinking that it's all about you, kid,_ Bones answered. _You know it ain't._

The blast of the realigned reactor core threw him into the bulkhead; he felt something crunch that shouldn't have before falling to his hands and knees. They refused to cooperate, not moving. 

_I let you down, Bones. I'm sorry._

~*~*~*~*~

Spock ran.

He broke protocol, and didn't care. He kept moving, not bothering to acknowledge the words or stares of the crew as he raced through the ship, the crew all celebrating the sudden miracle that they had survived. 

The Engineering deck flashed across his vision as he continued to run, and realized with growing panic what it was he felt even as he stopped in front of Scotty. Scotty's own mind was static-filled muck, a mix of anger, denial and loss. No words were necessary, after all. There was no such thing as miracles.

"Open it." Jim was on the other side, purple pain leaking like tears. He could- perhaps he could-

"The decontamination process is not complete. You'd flood the whole compartment," Scotty choked, brogue thick. "The door is locked, sir."

Not like this. It couldn't end like this.

Jim was looking up at him with bloodshot eyes, lips peeling as he struggled to close the door behind him, exposed skin crusted in burns. Spock knelt, willing the barrier between them to be gone. His own emotions swelled and churned, and he thought he would drown; sorrow, helplessness, rage, despair, thwarted expectations, all were kept stored in some corner of his soul where he never looked. Now all walls came down.

"Ship?" Kirk mumbled, blinking slowly as he struggled to breathe. His lungs rattled.

"Out of danger." Spock pressed his hands to the glass. "You saved the crew."

Kirk's eyes rolled, panting, before he clenched his fists. "You stopped Khan. Nice move."

"It is what you would have done."

"And this? This is what you would have done," Kirk mumbled, forehead thudding against the glass. "And then Bones would bitch us both out about it." He coughed, blood splattering the glass. "I'm sorry, Spock." Pale yellow fear soaked through the pain, and Spock could do nothing to reach it. "How do you choose not to feel?"

"I don't know." The sound of Jim's mind was fading to a trickle, a whisper of regret and guilt. "Right now I am failing." His eyes were wet; Vulcan biology tried to limit all loss of moisture. In this, he was his mother's son. 

And here, somehow, Jim tried to comfort him. "I want you to know why I couldn't let you die."

"Because you are my friend." His head throbbed, trying to reach out to those small threads of Jim's mind, personality. They slid through his fingers.

"Because I couldn't leave you behind." Jim tried to smile. "And I don't want to leave Bones behind, either."

"Jim," Spock said, and stopped. He didn't know what else to say as Jim put his hand up, against where Spock had his against the glass. Not close enough...

There was a hoarse rattle, one last time, and Jim's face went slack, falling against the deck, eyes dimmed and empty. The space beyond the door was flat and colorless, utterly silent as thoughts of fear and guilt stopped, cut off, a bell's ring stopped too early. The absence was profoundly _wrong_.

Spock's hands shook as the tears continued to fall. His own grief tried to stop him from breathing, but it reflected and multiplied, bouncing inside his head and heart. It chased out thought, obliterated logic. All that was left was a desire to _hurt, hurt the one who did this, hurt the one who had taken his friend-_  


The roar split his throat, tearing its way out before he could stop it.

**_"KHAAAAAAAAAAN!"_ **

~*~*~*~*~

John snapped awake as nerves reconnected themselves, and stared in bemusement at the view on the screen in front of him. Beautiful ocean, crashing against the edge of... He tried to take a deep breath, and found it was almost impossible; his ribs were still working their way out of his lungs.

Then he realized he was on his back, draped over the _back_ of the navigation chair, the entire front of the saucer section of the ship shattered and open to the elements. On Earth. 

He tried to lift himself, but his chest hurt too much. He felt like he might shatter again. So he shook his head, trying to see where he was, what was going on. He could smell cooked meat above him... well, above was relative as the entire bridge was stuck down in San Francisco Bay at a ninety degree angle. 

The meat smell was awful. Made his mouth water. There was something on top of him, crushing him into the back of the chair. 

He could move his arms, a bit. He tried patting himself down; his communicator was nowhere to be seen. The meat smell was strong. Almost on top-

Literally, on top of him. Some poor bastard was on his legs, getting cold, despite burning when the ship had fallen. His weight was what kept John from falling off the chair, but also kept him pinned.

The entire situation was precarious; John could hear the ship groaning, feel salt air hitting his skin.

The dead man's communicator was in his pocket, and it took John two tries to get it out. His hands trembled, fumbling against the thick fabric.

He needed to find out what was going on. Khan was nowhere in sight. He could have been unconscious for seconds, or it could have been days. His stomach didn't care as it continued to throttle as spine, hunger pains made his gorge rise. 

The man on top of him was fresh. Burned, but fresh.

Dammit. 

His fingers had trouble finding the buttons as he pressed down, trying to manipulate the communicator. 

"Mc- Grimm to Enterprise. Come in, _Enterprise_." He swallowed hard, groaning. " _Please_. Uhura, tell me you got your ears on..."

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, job interview over, Almost Human is over, and I had some time to write. Yay. We are counting down to the final chapters- probably three more at most, plus or minus the epilogue. Hopefully will round down there. Again, thanks to everyone who commented or left kudos.


	12. Chapter 12

At Starfleet Headquarters, in her old fashioned oak paneled office, Commodore Darnell was having a very bad day. 

The political situation at Starfleet was always far less united than most of the Federation knew. The Admiralty Board had more than its share of infighting, despite the idealistic pose they took in public. Joanna had, for years, tried to steer the board from behind the scenes, well aware that she could never actually take a place on the board herself. Instead she coax and prod, strong arm where she could, but she could never, ever be the one visibly in charge. Public scrutiny wasn't something she could afford. Not when she would never look older than thirty without make up.

It was, to be put mildly, a pain in the ass. 

Once, she had been the boots-on-the-ground type. By habit, blood, and personal choice, she liked getting her hands dirty with whatever needed to be done. Shooting, fighting, leading were all skills that came naturally to her. Only the need to keep from drawing too much attention to herself had kept her from making Captain by her mid-twenties. 

Then politics had reared its ugly head, and she had been grounded just shy of getting her own ship.

Even decades later, it galled. That was what had forced her to start playing the game, and while she had been grounded she had gone up the ranks, if only in name. For years, she fought on, keeping in the shadows and trying to make Starfleet live up to its own ideals. Yet what galled even worse now was the need to start withdrawing, trying to groom successors to take on the fight after her, when the laws she had been unable to change meant she had to fade out of this life. Pike had been one of her protégés after she had been forced to teach at Starfleet Academy. So had George Kirk. 

Now both were dead. 

No one was meant to bury their students.

And now, the opposition was trying to force her to retire.

She had come in that rainy morning, her yeoman briefing her on the current situation: Marcus had disappeared off the grid several hours ago, following a similar disappearance by the Enterprise the day before. The other admirals aligned with Marcus were starting to make noises about war; many of her own friends had died in John Harrison's attack. The loss of life had been terrible. Yet even worse was the certainty of a war they could not win.

Yeoman Chambers refused to meet her eyes, putting a cup of coffee at her elbow as she read through their latest attempt to oust her. Without Chris' support, she would have no choice. 

Joanna Darnell closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and got to her feet to walk to the enormous picture window overlooking the San Francisco Bay, and wondered what else could happen.

Then she looked up, and saw that the sky was falling.

~*~*~*~*~

"Search the enemy ship for signs of life," Spock ordered, having wiped the tears from his face on the turbo lift. Beside him, he could feel Nyota's grief and concern roll like a tide as he clenched his fists and bared his teeth.

"Commander, no one could have survived that!" Sulu protested, in yellow shades of disbelief. 

Spock shook his head. Khan's mind had not gone quiet. "He could."

"Aye, sir."

Nyota, behind him, had gone back to her post, her brows creased as she replaced her ear piece. Spock tuned her out (despite her emotions going from grief to annoyance, then on to curiosity) as he focused on the screen.

"Life signs on the ship," Sulu reported, then squinted in puzzlement. "Two- _Holy shit,_ " he hissed, as the bright signal that designated Khan left the screen area. "He just jumped-"

Spock didn't hear more. "Can we beam him up?"

"He's swimming towards shore, and he's moving too fast for me to get a lock." Sulu cast his eyes back at Spock, and Spock tried to get his pounding heart under control as red fogged his vision. "But it might be possible to send you down."

Spock heard no more, glancing back at Nyota, who only stepped towards him with a weak smile and watery eyes, brushing her fingers against his. "Go get him."

A blessing and a mandate. He didn't need anything more; Spock ran.

~*~*~*~*~

Nyota felt her eyes water more, but swallowed it down as professionalism took over. Her ears scanned the constant white noise as she fought to establish some kind of communications with Starfleet Headquarters.

The static was flickering in and out, at regular intervals. They kept her from being able to pay attention to the screen.

"I don't understand it," Sulu muttered. His fingers continued through his readouts. "I keep getting a life sign from the downed ship, but Khan left, didn't he?"

_...Hisshisshiss. Hiss. Hiss. Hiss. Hisshisshiss..._

"One of the crew?"

"There were barely any life signs on the ship to begin with," Sulu replied. 

_...Hiss. Hiss. Hiss. Hisshisshiss. Hiss. Hiss. Hiss..._

Nyota frowned. The static was a pattern, one that she knew: three short, three long. 

She turned from the view of Spock on the screen, her fingers flying across the communications board. There was a signal being broadcast; and her gut was telling that she knew where it was coming from.

"Sulu? Think that might be Doctor, mm, Sergeant Grimm?" she asked, hoping for some good news. She still had no idea why Doctor McCoy would have been out there, under an assumed name, and why they had taken their avowed pacifist and chief surgeon along. Neither Captain Kirk or Commander Spock had shared their reasoning yet...

"Uh- could be. Life signs keep wavering in and out, and it's not quite D- Grimm." Sulu looked back at her. "He's... I don't know what I'm looking at."

Nyota closed her eyes, but her hands kept moving as she realized was she was listening to. Three short, and three long breaks in the static. She had heard a scrap of it in school, as part of her Historical Decryption course. Morse code. Someone was tapping out Morse code.

"Come on, come on," she growled at her station as she went through the available frequencies, finally identifying it as a handheld communicator. The source of the transmission- which was definitely being directed at the _Enterprise_ \- was coming from the downed enemy ship.

"This is the _Enterprise_ ," she said, transmitting back, hoping at the other person's communicator was working enough. "Identify yourself."

~*~*~*~*~

"Uhura?" John asked, feeling his bones creak as he closed his eyes in relief, swallowing hard. A heavy gray veil was draped over him, blotting out the pain but trying to take his awareness with it. "It's- it's me."

There was a moment of silence. " _What's your location? Are you injured?_ "

"I'll... I don't know." He was having trouble forcing out words. His mouth had too many teeth, while his tongue curled and flopped. "I need to talk to Jim. Can you beam me up?" He almost didn't know the sound of his own voice.

" _We're trying, but the transporter won't lock on you_." She sounded off. Her voice shook and quavered.

"Is Jim there?"

There was silence on the other end as the ship moaned, ocean spray washing over his skin. Dread crept up to squeeze his chest as he waited. The meat smell tried to drown him, choking on his own saliva. He didn't know how far from land he was, or where Khan was, but John had a pretty good idea of where he was going.

"Uhura? Darlin', where's Jim?"

No answer. He was tempted to throw away his communicator because if it was taking this long for her to tell him, if it was taking _this long_ to get Jim on the horn then there was only one answer. But that was impossible, because John refused to allow it. 

" _Please_ , Nyota. _What happened to Jim?_ "

He heard a sob. " _He's dead, John._ "

John closed his eyes, felt his teeth chatter as a tremor went down his jaw and his stomach balled into knots. He felt hot, cold, head throbbing as he took a deep breath. 

Jim couldn't be dead. Not yet. John had lost too many important people already.

Consequences be _damned_.

"Is his body intact? Still got his brain?"

" _What? He died of radiation sickness, but he's... he's still all there-"_

"Good. Now, darlin', I need you to listen and listen good. Get to the Med Bay, and get Carol."

~*~*~*~

There was no such thing as miracles.

So Nyota has no idea why she's following Doctor McCoy's directions after racing through the _Enterprise_ to the Med Bay, and grabbing Doctors Marcus and M'Benga, holding up the communicator. It was why Jim, barely five minutes dead, was thrust into a cryotube while Doctor McCoy recited the code to start the sequence from memory.

None there questioned it. Everyone had seen the universe bend itself around James T. Kirk, but they had seen Leonard H. McCoy do the bending. They had no idea why he was still responding to the name John, but there was no doubt who it was- especially when McCoy used a medical override- in that moment. And if Doctor McCoy believed he could somehow save Jim... 

" _And I need somethin' else, darlin',_ " the voice on the other end of the com rasped. She held the communicator to her ear, frowning as the rest of the medical staff swarmed around her. Nyota bit her bottom lip, because she wanted nothing more than to help Spock, but...

"What is it?"

~*~*~*~*~

"Commodore?" someone called, coughing, almost directly against her ear.

Joanna inhaled, feeling her lungs inflate under protest. Something was very, very heavy on her back, and a sharp pain in her spine. Probably broken.

She was at Starfleet HQ. In her office. There was a body underneath hers?

Yeoman Chambers was looking up at her with bright, confused eyes, and Joanna felt hers clear as she healed. She remembered seeing the ship fall from the sky, remembered grabbing the young man and throwing him behind her desk, diving on top of him a moment later. Most of the Bay-facing wall was gone in the near miss, part of it exploding inwards. The old fashioned wooden bookshelves must have fallen-

"Commodore," Chambers murmured, awe on his face as Joanna levered herself, cursing as she tossed aside the thick, solid paneling. Her entire body cramped as everything came back online, bones realigning, fusing as her nerves crackled back into functionality; pain flared bright and pure as she pulled out the thick wooden stake from her shoulder. 

"You okay, kid?"

Chambers nodded, his green eyes bulging out as she pulled him to his feet, opening his mouth- and she put her hand over his mouth, shaking her head. The wound was already gone, sticky with blood. The kid (no, not a kid, he was in his early thirties now, she had to remember that) was still staring. She patted him down (ignoring his protests) and took a deep breath, and grunted when she couldn't smell anything beyond her own blood and smoke.

"We need to start helping with the rescue-" she started to say, but stopped when a dark figure stumbled into her office. 

He looked like hell, wet and filthy, the stump of right hand held tight against his chest. She couldn't smell him and his face was crusted in blood, nose broken and bruised, unrecognizable. He stopped in the doorway, and just stared for several heartbeats, expressionless.

"Chambers, take his other side," Joanna ordered. She reached for her belt to make a tourniquet; the wound was bleeding sluggishly... when it should have been gushing. She allowed herself to move fast, faster than a typical human as she grabbed the man's arm, looping the synthetic leather strip and jerking it tight. It was a miracle the man was on his feet and not in shock.

"Young man, stay calm. Can you keep walking?" Joanna barked, moving to brace him.

He kept staring at her, ice blue eyes unblinking as he pulled away, silent in the midst of the alarms and klaxons, the people running in the halls. He put his good hand to her face, and Joanna stepped back... and pulled Chambers behind her. 

"Calm down, son. You're going to be okay." She took a deep breath, and something familiar caught her attention. Something that she knew very, very well. "Now, tell us your name..." She kept pushing Chambers back, stepping away as the man reached for her again. 

His blue eyes searched hers, his lips quirking into a humorless smile. "So, it is true then. You are _his_ child." His words were soaked in bitterness. "Weak and spoiled."

"Given that I've never seen you before-" she took another deep breath, and only the unexpectedness of his actions kept her from putting two and two together. He smelled like her father.

"John never told you, did he? About where you came from?"

Joanna felt her lips stretch in a scowl. "I know _enough_."

~*~*~*~*~

Spock almost ran over Nyota.

She materialized in front of him, and he skidded to a stop bare centimeters shy of slamming into her. As it was, he tried to view her as an obstacle, to continue on in his pursuit. He had lost track of Khan several minutes ago in the brilliant maelstrom of human minds but he refused to give up the hunt. He merely had to follow the chaos.

"Spock- Spock _stop_."

He kept running.

" _SPOCK! Wait!_ "

He just had to-

"Spock, he's alive!"

Spock skidded to a stop, falling and rolling twice before coming back to his feet. He stared at Uhura, chest heaving as he gulped air. "Jim?"

"John- Doctor McCoy- whatever- he's alive."

Spock turned to leave.

"Spock- listen to me! _He says he can save Kirk!_ "

Air stuck in his chest, and Spock turned to her as she stalked up to him, and cracked her fist across his face. "He's at the crash site. Come on, he knows where Khan went. _Come on!_ "

Spock took a deep breath, squeezing his hands into fists as logic attempted to assert itself. He found himself nodding at her, and she grabbed his hand to lead the way.

~*~*~*~*~

John was drifting, the cold of San Francisco Bay rocking him back and forth as he struggled to keep his head above water, to do not let himself sink below the waves. It was hard to remember why. Everything was dark. All of his senses were clouded, muddled. Memory scattered like light on the waves, and the need to struggle, to keep fighting felt so distant. Oblivion called, wanting to draw him down deep- a respite from an eternity of battle.

Then there were hands on him, pulling him up and out, dragging him from the quiet, cool dark. Someone pried open his jaws, before pinching his nose and forcing air into mouth while another pair of hands pounded on his ribcage.

Then he was retching, salt water coming up out of his lungs and flinching from the bright light as he opened his eyes. John coughed, clutching at the ground as he rolled over and heaved himself to his knees. Hands plucked and patted his back and shoulders as the words twittered back into meaning.

"Doctor McCoy," someone said, and he thought it was Nyota Uhura. "Doctor? Can you hear me?"

"I- yeah." He wanted to curl up and sleep until next year. Memory stayed blissfully silent in the face of trying to getting up and moving. He didn't have the energy to care. "What's... what's goin' on? Where'm I?"

"You are in San Francisco, Doctor," said Spock, but he couldn't be Spock. He sounded unraveled. Memory still wriggled on a distant hook, and he grabbed at it. He was promptly scored.

"Jim?"

"I-" Uhura's voice caught, getting wet and thick. "You don't..."

"Dead." He coughed, and the cold in his bones wasn't just from the drowning. Leonard fell on to his back, closing his eyes against the afternoon glare. "Got the hypos? Spock, sitrep?"

Spock glanced at Uhura, who put her med kit next to Leonard. He fumbled for it, his fingers swollen and stiff. Nyota gave him a weak smile before doing the honors. 

The first hypo was filled with glucose, more than enough to put a normal human into a diabetic coma. 

"Ten point five minutes ago Captain Kirk died from radiation poisoning after realigning the reactor core." Spock's jaw worked, and Leonard hadn't seen him this worked up since Mandy died and tried to beat Jim's face in. 

God. Jim. 

Memory found him, cursed him for his moment of quiet by lashing him with a steady stream of faces. He saw all the people he couldn't save: the Hell Fighters, his partners at the LAPD, the Judges of the meat grinder known as MegaCity One. His own family, spouses and students and friends. 

"After the enemy ship fell, Khan escaped. I-"

The second hypo hit his neck, this one filled with calcium, phosphorus and magnesium to help rebuild his skeleton to something that would support his weight without breaking. The third was a mix of proteins, electrolytes and trace minerals.

He almost screamed. Almost. Leonard realized he had slapped his hand over his own mouth as he curled into ball, shaking as his body caught up with an inhuman crunch and crackle. Uhura flinched back, despite Leonard's efforts, and Spock cut off mid-sentence because under that was a deep, bestial growling. Leonard realized it was coming from himself.

Then it was over, and Leonard took a long, shuddering breath. Uhura had scrambled away, and Spock was standing next to her with his eyes wide. 

"Khan's headed towards Starfleet HQ," Leonard said, but he was more than aware that his syrupy drawl was gone, replaced with a flat growl. He looked up, meeting Spock's gaze, who flinched away. "When you blew the torpedoes, he thought he lost everything." He heard another low, tearing snarl from his chest, and Uhura took another step back. "He'll try to take or kill what matters most to me." His breath hitched. Khan had already taken-

No. They were getting Jim back. That was the end of it.

He grabbed for the bag Uhura had brought, and pulled out his lock box.

The service revolver inside was over two hundred years old, and an antique next to his Lawgiver. He had made sure it still worked in case of an emergency, and the clean click it made when he loaded it made him smile.

Reaper got to his feet, and rubbed the blood off his face. Then he thrust the gun into his thigh holster and gestured to Spock.

"Try to keep up."

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very busy at work right now. I also hope the Joanna parts aren't too intrusive. I know there is a fine line in making aging a character up and effectively making her an OC, and with what I've done to Joanna is (attempt) to put her somewhere between Miranda Lawson and Jane Shepard of Mass Effect. (Which, in my head, made sense- after all, her daddy is the Doomguy!) I don't want to focus too much on her but she felt necessary for this part. She will never be the focus, and please tell me if she becomes too much of a Sue. 
> 
> Thanks for your patience. I hope you enjoyed.


	13. Chapter 13

The man's gaze slipped from Joanna's face, taking in the smashed office, pursing his lips as he stumbled past her. As for herself, she kept pushing Chambers behind her, and when the door was clear she pushed him through. Chambers, hardly an idiot, ran like hell.

The man couldn't care less. Instead he walked towards her desk, picking up a shattered frame, one of the many that held pictures of her family.

The picture in question was of Mark and herself standing beside Cas on her wedding day, standing with her lovely wife. Cas was in a white tux, with Nandini in a red dress, and both glowing between their parents. Beside it were pictures of their three children. Her son, Sam, and his daughter were beside that, sitting a pier and wearing floppy bucket hat and proudly showing off his daughter's minnow.

"Your chosen, and your children?" he asked, voice distant and disapproving. 

Joanna stayed silent.

He squatted, grabbing another, this one with Joanna and her sisters at Doris' college graduation. Joanna hated that one- she was dressed like a little punk- but it had her parents grinning like idiots as Dad had tossed Doris in the air in celebration like a child.

"He raised you with another?"

"Listen, bud, I don't know who you are, or what the hell you're doing here," Joanna said as she kept edging around the man; he had used her father's birth name, something no living person who wasn't family should know. That automatically meant dangerous. "But you're injured, so I'll this pass. Come with me now and we'll act like you just had the concussion from hell."

She had a phaser under her chair. She just had to get to it.

"You know nothing of me," the man muttered. If anything, the bitterness in his voice deepened. "Nothing at all. He cast me from his life utterly."

"What on God's green earth are you talking about, man?" Joanna asked. She had about three strides to make it to her chair. 

The man chuckled; a deep, sonorous sound. "Did John," and Joanna felt he was somehow getting her Dad's real name _dirty_ , "ever tell you who your father- your other father- was?"

"Listen. Whatever the hell you think you know about me, I can promise you-"

"Your genetic material was taken from two sources." The man sounded like he was dead, at least. But his body had no trouble getting to its feet to pin her with a lost, grief stricken expression. "John's, and mine."

Joanna growled, diving towards her chair, tucking into a roll and-

It wasn't there. 

"Oh, this?" The man chuckled again, and she saw her phaser brandished in his hand. She froze. "It dislodged. So tell me, child, why a woman created to be nearly ageless and immortal would be living the life of a minor officer?"

~*~*~*~*~

_Physician, heal thyself._

Spock had deduced that Leonard McCoy, aka John Grimm, was an Augment. He had observed the strength and speed that Khan used when fighting, and had seen the Doctor broken and helpless. 

Then he had seen the good Doctor rise, body healed to an extent that would have seemed miraculous in a bygone age. Spock was awed; not just that a human could have access to better-than-Vulcan healing, but that he had never noticed such abilities displayed before. 

Yet such thoughts would have to wait until later, as they ran through the streets towards Starfleet Headquarters, almost getting caught in the backwash of water from where the Vengeance had landed in the Bay. Most of the damage was restricted to the docks; Spock noted it could be much, much worse.

"Khan avoided striking Starfleet Headquarters," Spock said, voice shaking as he fought to keep up with the Doctor. "Why? Since he believes that the torpedoes were destroyed-"

McCoy slowed down, gun up as they approached the damaged building. " _Believes_ the torpedoes were- Spock, they _weren't_?" he asked, voice laced with horror. "You _didn't_ kill them?"

"They were helpless-"

"Spock, they're," and McCoy trembled, his face turning white as he barked out laughter, and turned away. His mind roiled with sickly green-gray revulsion. "They're _guilty_. Guilty of experimenting on sentients, guilty of theft, drug and human trafficking and anything else they could get their filthy hands on. They're guilty of causing the most brutal war in human history. Six _hundred_ million people died in the initial onslaught of World War Three. _Billions_ died in the fallout. We were forced to huddle in the Mega Cities for _decades_ , almost a century behind walls where everything that was good about humanity withered and died. A quick death, in cryo-sleep, is better than they deserve."

They approached the beach-facing side of the complex, the side where half the windows and walls were gone or licked by flame. 

Doctor McCoy didn't even stop, just holstered his weapon as he found a corner and leapt, grabbing a ledge and kicking off the walls. He flew upwards, and Spock followed, grunting as they went up.

"How do you plan to save Captain Kirk?" Spock said, shouting over the barrage of noise. 

"Khan's blood- it can heal almost anything," McCoy answered, without pausing, his fingers finding small crevices to grip as they keep going up, body twisting like a spider's. He didn't even grunt. "We find him, catch him, and then we bleed him."

"What of your own?" 

The Doctor paused, and glanced back at Spock, but didn't answer. 

The harsh, sour whine of reds and yellows popping and blistering in waves off the Doctor's mind was answer enough.

~*~*~*~*~

Khan.

He should have killed the bastard as soon as Jim had walked out of his cell. Sooner. Reaper should have embraced his namesake and struck as soon as he had entered the damn brig. He should have known that Khan would come for his friends, his family. He should have been willing to give up being Leonard McCoy to save the people he cared about.

He listened to Spock breathe, heard his heart roll a long staccato in the background. 

Reaper didn't bother to speak, just listened for Khan's heart, his breathing, his voice; he hated that even after all these years he knew them without question. For years he had tried to put that time behind him, bury it like he had buried Mega City One and his friends on the LAPD. Being on a leash had never been a problem, but now he picked the hand that held it.

He looked back and gestured to Spock, who was starting to look the worse for wear; the climb smooth and even but it was a long one. Khan's vitals were too far to hear but Reaper could make out his voice as a low, deep rumble about five more floors up. Reaper had an idea that Khan might go after Jo... 

... but he heard her, as he climbed closer. Jo's voice was soft, her breathing and heart rate both elevated but even. She was staying calm, god bless her. Khan answered, and Reaper propelled himself upwards, diving into the wrecked office and on to his hands and knees. 

Khan had his phaser pointed at Jo, who had her hands up. For a brief moment, Reaper thought that Khan had already shot her- her shoulder was soaked in blood- but she was standing upright and already healed. Khan, never an idiot, acted immediately to leap towards Jo and grabbed her.

"You know, taking hostages is getting a bit old," Reaper bit out, pistol pointed at Khan and Jo, who stared at her Dad with narrowed eyes. He smelled no fear, no panic, on her. Instead, he saw a flush of rage on her cheeks. 

"Your greatest weakness has always been that you care about lesser creatures," Khan said, but his hands and voice both shook. His face was pasty, almost gray, despite the fact that his body had already healed over his stump of an arm. 

"You call your own child lesser? Never pegged you for an idiot before," Reaper said as he narrowed his eyes. "Just a goddamn monster."

"Of course. You _ruined_ her. She is weak."

Joanna flicked her eyes back, taking in the form of Spock as he pulled himself over the ledge, and then at Reaper. "Dad. We're going to have a very long talk about this."

"Of course, sweet pea." Reaper didn't waver. "Sorry. Didn't want you to be stuck in the middle. You deserved better than this."

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"This the bastard that shot up Pike and the others?" Joanna asked, soft but deadly. She was limp in Khan's arms, deliberately throwing off Khan's center of gravity. Khan held her tight. 

Reaper nodded. Joanna gave a grim smile, and closed her eyes. "Do it."

Khan staggered backwards as the first shot blew through Jo's shoulder and into his chest. The second shot pierced Jo's lungs, before hitting Khan's stomach. He snarled, all the blood draining from his face as he shoved Jo away. 

Spock made a sound suspiciously like a yelp as he caught her, and Reaper ran to kneel, checking Jo's breathing.

"Get him, old man," she said, panting, through clenched teeth. "Go."

~*~*~*~*~

Spock didn't know what to think when the old-fashioned solid projectiles hit the Commodore, but he felt a horrible flash of anguish. An echo of the feel of his mother, her mind winking out after a long black horror, washed up over him. He couldn't do it. He couldn't lose another-

His hands reached to her face- he had no idea what else to do- but was promptly slapped away.

"Up," she ordered, and Spock got to his feet. Her mind, which was a warm wave of purple and blue, tinged with flickers of hot orange confusion. He offered his hand, and she took it as he hauled her to his feet. 

She was heavy. Far heavier than should have been normal for a woman of her height and age. He grunted, and mind working through the exhaustion and anger and-

"Come on," she said, and stood straight, kicking off her heels. "They're getting away." He could see the holes where the bullets had perforated her clothes; underneath was whole skin. The same kind of healing he had seen moments before.

"You're-" he didn't know why he was breathing so hard. Today had been a day for hard emotional shocks, it seemed. 

"Get your ass in gear, kid," she snapped, touching her chest and grimacing at the blood, before taking off at a run. "Dad ain't right."

"Bu-"

She didn't wait for him. He followed, and they careened through debris strewn halls, sirens and klaxons blaring, dodging rescuers as they pulled people free. He could feel flashes and strikes and the soft quiet gasps of lights going out, and he pushed it all away. There was nothing to be done. But he could save- _maybe_ they could still save-

Reaper- and that was the name that seemed to haunt the man, _Reaper_ \- had cornered Khan against a three hundred meter drop, who was huddled in a ball as Reaper dropped his gun in favor of beating Khan bloody. Spock saw his colors, poisonous and festering bile yellow hate, a desire to inflict nothing more than pain and a craving for revenge. 

Khan tried to block, but he could only punch and acting with one hand; all he could do with his stump of an arm was wrap it around himself. 

"Maldonado," Spock heard Reaper grunt, one fist crashing against Khan's face. "Rudy," the next kick broke Khan's left kneecap. "Richard. Valerie." He punctuated each name with another slam against Khan's ribs. " _Dorian_." His breathing turned bestial, and Spock saw something black ooze through Reaper's aura, tried to stain it. 

A low, deep growl reverberated. This time, the names were harsh, almost incomprehensible. "Portman. The Kid," tears mixed in, and Spock found himself moving forward with the Commodore to grab Reaper's shoulders. "Mac. Goat. Destroyer. Duke," and when they pinned his arms, Reaper brought up one foot and brought his heel down sharply. " _Sarge_." 

There was sharp crack, and Khan, while breathing, went limp.

"Dad," Joanna whispered, and Spock found himself twitching at the words. "Dad, you have to stop." She put her hand on his face. "You aren't acting like yourself." The stain darkened, and pale cat-yellow eyes gleamed as Reaper swung around to face him.

"Doctor. You said you could use him to save Jim."

A sob. The Doctor's aura shed the stain as he felt McCoy get hold of himself, and wipe the tears as his eyes returned to their normal hazel. 

"Khan Noonien Singh, you are hereby found guilty of grand theft, terrorism, and multiple homicides. Judgment..." McCoy trailed off, and took another deep breath. "Judgment. You will give us what we need to save your victims." 

They turned around to find Khan had regained his feet- and had somehow gotten the gun from where Reaper had dropped it. His hand shook as he stood, hunched over, multiple lacerations marring his pale face, somehow able to stay standing despite the wounds and blood loss. He licked his lips as the gun in his hands wavered, and his mind was colored hysterical, bubbling orange. 

"So. Ironic, isn't it? You want to use me as a lab rat to regain what you lost?" Khan didn't have the strength to sneer, but he tried. "Like I used you?" The gun wavered, pointing between Reaper, the Commodore and Spock. He didn't fire; Spock knew that Khan was fast and strong, under normal circumstances. But Khan was barely clinging to consciousness, eyes dilated and unfocused. He couldn't run, and even if he shot at Reaper and hit, the Commodore would take him down. 

"You have the ability to give back what was taken," McCoy said, and Spock flinched at the blinding flash of rage. "And you killed more people than you can ever restore. If this means you wind up being in a lab the rest of your life? I think I can live with that. It's over, Khan. You've lost."

Khan lowered the gun, laughing and spitting the blood from his mouth. Despair coated his mind like ashes. "But can you live with this?" he choked out, bringing the muzzle of the gun up to the soft spot under his chin and firing. 

Silence followed the loud crack, and Khan fell backwards as his knees collapsed, a hole in the top of his head as blood and bone sprayed backwards. His eyes stayed fixed on Reaper, a rictus parodying joy even as Reaper howled to catch him. 

He missed. 

Spock fell to his knees, as the irrational and illogical hope they could save Jim ran through his fingers like water. He felt his mind tremble, sanity bowing under the sheer weight of collected loss-

And McCoy gripped Spock's shoulder and Spock felt _roots_ , the tree bending but not breaking under the storm. He clung to that, let the despair rise and break around him, but he wasn't washed away.

"We're gonna get him back, son," McCoy promised. "We're gonna get him back."

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This shouldn't have taken so long, but a combination of not a lot of off days, having to get together paperwork for my potential new job (yay!) and doing a lot of studying along with working full time has meant I haven't gotten to this, or any of my other writing. I hope this was worth the wait, and thanks for every comment and kudo.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: brief, speculative mention of suicide

All told, Leonard didn't get back to the ship for two days. 

There were too many people, too many calls for help, for a _doctor_ , for Leonard to ignore. He let himself be tugged into the rescue efforts, in finding survivors. He did his best to use his abilities to find the living among the rubble of Khan's attack, and reminded himself that things could have been much, much worse if Khan hadn't redirected the ship. The casualties could have been so much higher.

Jim wasn't going anywhere, so Leonard did what he always did. Grabbed a med kit, set up a triage, and realized about halfway through the night that his assistants were none other than Spock and Uhura, both of them dusty and coated in blood from helping with patients. 

He tried not to think about what he was going to do, or that Jim was dead on the _Enterprise_ in a stasis pod. He couldn't obsess over the possible consequences: that he could fuck this up and, best case scenario, created an immortal and ageless Jim Kirk. The worst case scenario was a potential zombie apocalypse that decimated the Earth's population. He floundered as his mind swam through the endless shadings in between.

So he kept working, saved lives, and told himself that he had faith. Jim had problems, but Jim was still a good man. Leonard _knew_ this. He had seen it, back at the Academy and as they careened about on missions. While Jim could be an impulsive idiot, he held none of the sadism that had turned Sarge. 

Joanna, one of the few high-ranking officers left, had been pulled away early. He had smiled at her- she was so damn brave, and he was so proud of her- as she had left to find something less bloody and would attract less questions.

Eventually Uhura and Spock disappeared, and Leonard somehow found himself in Starfleet Medical, peeling off his bloody scrubs and hoping they made it back to the _Enterprise_. He needed to get back there himself. He had a lot to get done.

Khan was dead, and any chance of using his blood as a serum to revive Jim was gone. It would take uncontaminated tissue to do it; Khan had thrown himself into the ocean, and his body was useless when it was fished out of the Bay a day later. Khan's last revenge, even if it wasn't potentially the worst. 

Leonard had finished the forms and files, signed off on everything, before getting on to a shuttle headed back toward the _Enterprise_ without his usual bluster and complaints. He still hated shuttles- and always would- but there was no one to put on an act for. If he died now, at least he would get a chance to rest and forget. 

John pushed that thought to a deep, dark corner of his mind and tried not to stare at his hands. 

The _Enterprise_ looked like hell, battered and broken, and getting on board had him pulled in to another round of work. Caring for the living was a doctor's obligation, and if people were staring at him, well, he ignored it. He could hear soft whispers and rumors spreading, none of them quite coming close to the truth. Thankfully his staff were too professional to indulge, but he could feel the eyes of his patients on him.

Eventually he came out the other side, washing up and giving himself another shot of minerals so he wouldn't start licking his equipment. It helped take the edge off.

Sam was still there, deeply asleep, and he walked over to her and took her hand. He found himself mouthing words, unable to give them voice: He was afraid. What he was about to do was profoundly unethical. Jim was one man, and even if everything went well he would end up dead again. What right did John have to bring back Jim, when so many other people had died in this clusterfuck of a mission?

If Khan had survived, John had to admit, he would have no problem with the man being bled. It was unconscionable to consider, but Khan had been responsible for countless, literally _countless_ , deaths. An existence condemning Khan to a hell of being nothing but a resource didn't bother him in the least. Khan had tried it with John, and turnabout was fair play. If Khan could return the life he had taken, then perhaps there really was justice in the galaxy.

He could speculate endlessly on the ifs, though. All he had was a single vial of Khan's blood, and while he had an idea of how to use it, it wouldn't be enough to revive the dead. 

John walked to the back of the Med Bay, sighing before he ordered out his remaining skeleton staff. He was side-eyed, but they eventually did as he asked.

"I want you to know, I'm being one hell of a selfish bastard here," he said to Jim, before sitting down to work and rubbing his eyes. He could survive three days without sleep, but damned if his thoughts weren't turning fuzzy. "God, Jim," John said, trailing his fingers over the surface of the pod, the heat from his hand being sucked away. "I can't stand the thought of a galaxy without you, and I hope you can forgive me for it."

~*~*~*~

Spock felt Nyota at his elbow, as she walked beside him in silence.

This was a moment where words were necessary. There was a lot to talk about, to try to compute, to digest. Nyota's greater eloquence often helped provide shadings of meaning that he would sometimes overlook. Her ability to frame the context of a situation with her words were one of her most attractive traits, as far as he was concerned... but they simply hadn't had time to discuss what had happened. 

As long as those words weren't spoken, Spock hadn't been forced to confront what he had lost.

They had both assumed that, with Khan's death, any hope of resurrecting Jim was gone. They had lost themselves in work after that. The _Enterprise_ needed them and they had returned after helping the doctor through the night at Starfleet Headquarters. Spock had a habit of using duty as a buffer between himself and tragedy, and from how Nyota had been acting, she had done much the same. 

Then the Doctor had called them both, and they had come, almost at a run. 

The room was filled with music: old, loud, and filled with electric guitar riffs, and Spock and Nyota both winced as they arrived. The words were hard to make out, and Spock tried to fend off the soft, faded emotions coming from the Doctor, a muddy quagmire of hope mixed with desperation. His back was towards them, eating a cup of ice. 

"Doctor McCoy?" Nyota asked, clasping her hands in front of her. He realized she hadn't had any explanations for who and what he was... and he didn't, not really. Nothing confirmed. Though if Khan's attack, and his Aunt's words were true...

"Yes?"

"You wanted to see us?"

"Thought you might want to be here," he said, standing and giving a stretch, then peeled off his tunic and undershirt. 

Spock felt a quick flicker of pale pink amusement at the right. "Here for what?"

McCoy took a deep breath, and then reached for a box, sliding his fingers over the lock. It opened, and McCoy pulled out his pistol. 

"Bring back Jim. Here." He slapped the weapon in Spock's hand before reaching to tap in the code to begin opening the cryostasis pod. 

The weapon was heavier than it looked. "Why-"

"Using Khan's blood would have been safer," McCoy said, leaping in to an explanation, his voice rough as he took another bite of ice. He crunched, swallowed, and went on. "He was specifically bred and altered with the intent to be used as a leader, a figurehead, to bring Earth to 'peace.'" He snorted in disgust and put his cup down. "Each Augment- we called 'em Chromes back then- was the result of an individual process, and as much as I would like to, none of the others regenerated at even half the rate. They're not useable."

"Except for you," Spock said, tilting his head in curiosity. "You regenerate even faster."

"I'm not an Augment, Spock," the man in front of him said, and seemed to deflate. "I'm just some poor bastard that was in the wrong place, at the wrong time." He exhaled, and refused to meet Spock's eyes. Spock felt a tremble, a moment of shame and regret pouring off him before being choked off. "The stuff that made me, it's dangerous. Stupidly so. For some reason it worked for me, but for some? It turns them into monsters." He took Spock's hand, and corrected Spock's grip, before guiding it upwards to his forehead. "Listen to me, son. Once through the head," and he brought the muzzle down to point at his chest. "And once through the heart. If Jim changes, don't you fucking _dare_ hesitate."

Nyota's jaw had dropped. "What- what's going on-"

"I shouldn't tell you, darlin," McCoy whispered. "Because the people that found Khan, they might find me. And if it was just me, I might risk it. But we saw what Section 31 could do with Khan." He cracked his knuckles. "I ain't gonna pretend I got anywhere near his brain power, but they could use me in other ways." He exhaled, before grabbing needle and tube, and inserted one end into the port in Jim's arm. "I never figured out what the trigger was. Best Sam and I could figure?" He laughed, more a squawk. "God, it makes no sense."

"What do you mean? I mean-" Nyota stuttered. "What are you talking about? What causes-"

"Evil."

"Doctor, that is highly illogical," Spock protested, as McCoy put the other end of the tube inside his own arm and made a fist. The clear tube turned red. "The human genome has been mapped for centuries, and understood and manipulated almost as long. 'Evil' refers to a constellation of culturally bound ideas-"

"Never could tell if it was a person being a sadist, psychopath, or just plain selfish," McCoy went on, ignoring Spock. "Because I can tell you, I've been all three. Or if it is a matter of degree." He shrugged, then laughed the same humorless laugh. "I don't know. All I do know is that I'm the only person to survive being given a dose in adulthood."

Blood continued to course into the body of Jim Kirk. 

"Dosed with what?" Nyota asked. She had crossed her arms as McCoy bared his teeth at her...

"An artificial twenty-fourth chromosome. They found it on Mars."

Spock blinked. "But humans did not land on Mars until-"

"I know." McCoy scoffed. "Gotta love the fairy tales they teach in school these days. In their defense, almost no one knew about Olduvai. Most of the information was lost and for a good reason. The pertinent details are this: they found a way there, I don't think the builders were human, but all the remains on Olduvai were. Human, I mean. Except with twenty-four pairs of chromosomes. The team studying them could find no diseases, cancers or physical defects."

"Then what caused their civilization to fall?" Spock asked, baffled, his attention split between the faint flush of the living blood moving through Jim's body and McCoy's dry, flat delivery. "If they were like you-"

"I never got a chance to read the research. That was Sam's area of expertise, not mine. But something killed them. What I do know is that the idiots in charge decided to experiment on a death row inmate and created a monster that caused the deaths of two hundred people." McCoy's mouth twisted. 

Nyota shifted, and he could sense her disquiet. "How old were the remains..?"

"I don't know. Old. They were human, but I don't think they were modern humans," McCoy said with a shrug. Both Nyota and Spock stared at his back. "Most of the research was lost-" then his laugh had a bit more humor to it. "Of course, me blowing the Ark up didn't help." His face was pale, colors fading further. 

Spock glanced down, and realized how fast McCoy was being drained. "You should be falling unconscious from exsanguination within three point two minutes."

"Got an anti-clotting agent on the filament," McCoy replied. "But it takes about two hundred liters before I pass out." His face was turning ashen despite his words.

"Your arm was broken, then you were hit with a phaser set to kill, had most of your bones crushed, and then survived a starship crashing into San Francisco Bay. You were floating face down on the Bay when we found you," Spock reminded him. "Your body required supplements in order to fully restore itself. I doubt you have slept since any of this happened."

McCoy just shrugged. His eyes were fixed on Jim's face, which was starting to turn warm and pink again, despite the lack of feedback from the biobed's sensors. 

Minutes, then half an hour, pass in silence. McCoy had run out of explanations, or rather, he refused to answer any questions. Spock had many, but none of them felt appropriate to say when McCoy had clearly lied about his recuperative abilities and was swaying back and forth even if he had sat down. Spock was still holding the gun. 

He had a split second more warning than anyone else, a small spark that lit, and the biobed monitors registered brain activity. Then a pulse- faint, all but undetectable- started flitting across the monitors.

Nyota gasped, hand going over her face as her eyes gleamed with tears. Spock felt a prickle race down his face and neck, as his desire to remain detached lost in the face of something near-miraculous. 

McCoy didn't smile. In fact, his expression became even more dour.

Kirk's vital signs continued to improve... up until Spock felt something go horribly wrong. A stain seeped through the growing, peaceful blue of Jim's aura-

There was a sound like breaking plastic as Jim's eyes snapped open and his lips peeled back in a grimace of pain. The veins under his skin turned black, and Jim's back arched as he choked out a broken gurgle. 

"Doctor, what is-?"

"Stand by," McCoy snapped, yanking the tube free of Jim's arm. The small puncture sealed up immediately. "Dammit. I hope this works-"

"What's going on?" Nyota asked, voice high and worried as she sensibly backed away when Jim started to thrash.

"Doctor-"

There was a hypo next to the bed. Indistinguishable from the others, except for the red-black fluid inside, and McCoy was grabbing it- and he hesitated.

"What are you waiting for?"

"We gotta wait until he's healed enough," McCoy said, taking Jim's hand with his free one. "This- God, I hope it works- this should remove the C-24 infection if we catch it early but damn I just don't know-"

_"You don't know?"_

"Come on, Jim, fight it." Jim's aura tried to clear, tried to ride out whatever was wrong with it, in response to the sound of McCoy's voice, but the valiant effort came too late. The darkness started to seep inside-

When McCoy stabbed down with the hypo. There was a hiss and a snap, and Jim's entire body convulsed. His hands, which had gnarled into talons, relaxed and regained their normal shape. The darkness retreated. 

"Well. Good to see Khan's blood was good for something," McCoy muttered, standing up from where he had been hunched over Jim's form. 

Both Spock and Nyota could not contain their sighs of relief as Jim's vitals all soothed, returning to a normal range. Everything seemed to right itself. 

"Miracles do not exist," Spock heard himself say, but at that moment the words rang hollow. He had just witnessed one. The gun fell from his numb fingers as he stared. "But..."

Nyota took his hand, and he found himself curling around her, letting her ground him. He found himself fighting the urge to cry once more.

McCoy sank to his knees beside the bed, breathing hard as he closed his eyes. Spock reached out, offered his hand, and McCoy took it.

The brief skin to skin contact focused the muddle colors into a moment of bittersweet. The sweet was obvious, but the bitter...

"Doctor McCoy, are you all right?" 

McCoy tried to smile. It never reached his eyes. "I'm fine, Spock. I'm always," he paused, exhaled, and ran his fingers through Jim's hair. "Fine. Give Jim a few weeks and he'll be right as rain. We'll keep him under until then, until the story about how we used Khan's blood to bring him back is believed. Don't want to upset him."

"Of course." Spock didn't know what else to do, but to agree. McCoy's mind was muted blues and grays, a soft, clinging fog. 

"I don't think I need to tell you that what we just did, doesn't need to get out," McCoy said, and both Spock and Nyota nodded. "I've altered the official records, saying that we put Jim in stasis before he died, and that we used Khan's blood to heal him. There will be blow back from that, and Jim might wind up under a microscope for a few months, but he's alive to worry about it."

Spock opened his mouth. That McCoy would have the skill, let alone the inclination, to hack into official Starfleet records and change them shouldn't have been a surprise. Spock could see the logic of his actions. Both Nyota and himself were part of something highly illegal: the genetic modification of another sapient being without his consent. That Kirk would most likely prefer to live, had been in terror at his death, was beside the point. 

"Doctor, would you want me to-"

"You kids are fine." McCoy put his hand on Jim's chest, feeling the rise and fall as he breathed. "Don't worry. I'll take care of all of it. You- just take of care of Jim when he gets better." 

Nyota spoke for both of them. "Always, Doctor. Always."

~*~*~*~

The whispers had followed Leonard, no matter where he went on the _Enterprise_. 

He heard them all, of course. Conversations would cut off as soon as he came into view, but his better-than-human hearing meant that he caught all the gossip, the awe, the disbelief. It had been particularly bad on the Bridge, when he had gone up to see Spock about some trivial report. The silence, and the stares, had made him want to go shower as soon as he had left. 

Jim had been moved off-ship, down to a hospital in San Francisco. He knew the place by reputation, even if its name had changed several times (he still thought of it as UCDMC, now it was UFPMCSF) and was well known for its neurology department. He remembered the head of the department, back when she was a student. Good kid, good head on her shoulders. That had been fifty years ago.

Leonard forced the soft sigh down. He knew this would be the cost of resurrecting Jim. All miracles had their price.

He had a forty minute window to get Sam off the Enterprise and on a shuttle heading down to San Fran, and from there, there terrible two of Lester and Cas would take his sister on to the house in Marietta. His grandson Sam would then start laying false trails, and his other grandson James was helping get the house ready. 

Jo was already working on altering Leonard's official records. In less than a day, Leonard McCoy would slide off the radar, looking like a man who had self-destructed over the course of years after his failed marriage. No one would go looking, because no one cared about a pitiful drunk. 

So thus would end the life of Leonard McCoy: in obscurity, all accolades forgotten, reputation smeared beyond all hope of recovery. A quiet suicide would be swept under the rug after that, because Starfleet couldn't afford the embarrassment. Spock and Nyota would go on to lead great careers, and Jim would eventually recover and become the legend he deserved to be. 

John's breath caught in his chest.

His fingers lightly tapped on the console to start bringing his sister out of her coma. He swallowed down the bittersweet tears and the ache under his ribs as she roused, taking a deep breath as her eyes flickered open.

"Hi, Sam," he whispered, taking her hand, looking into her confused, muzzy eyes. A faint smile of recognition started on her lips. "Welcome to the twenty-third century."

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are. Two more chapters, I think. I haven't had the time to write, with working on an online TESL course along with practicing Japanese, it might be another month until the next part gets written. I hope it doesn't take that long. 
> 
> Thank you, everyone who comments and leaves kudos. Makes me happy dance!
> 
> And, I have also had a terrible, terrible idea for another Reaper Bones fic after watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I always sort of thought of C-24 as super soldier serum. The idea is: what if section 31 discovered Reaper instead of Khan, after the events of the first reboot movie?
> 
> *finds a place to hide as the plot bunny gnaws on ankles* Sigh...


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! I had no internet for about a month, had a doctor freakout, and now I'm in Japan again! 
> 
> My life. Be active and wacky. And exhausting. 
> 
> Here is an extra large chapter.

Spock was dressed in his formal dress uniform, deep in thought as he stood in the hall outside of the remnants of his Aunt's office. He stood at parade rest, and did not fidget the way his companion did. Not that he could blame Nyota for her disquiet. Commodore Darnell's reputation proceeded her: she was well known for her strategic, tactical and leadership courses, and had even helped Spock design the Kobiyashi Maru test. She also spoke in blunt, sometimes mixed metaphors, allowed herself to get carried away in passionate rants, and cared deeply for anyone under her command. 

In hindsight, it should have been obvious that she was related to Doctor McCoy, if not the exact nature of their relationship.

"So. Your Aunt," Nyota said, as they waited. Her hands were plucking at her uniform from nerves. Commodore Darnell was also famous for being harsh, almost violent when angered. The agreed upon story was that the political snafu surrounding the deaths of her team while exploring an ancient ruin on an uncharted world had lead her to be bitter at her fate... Now, Spock felt that information was incomplete, at best.

"Yes?"

"She's... um. She's..."

"She is many things." Spock didn't smile at Nyota, but he thought she caught his own uncertainty. "And I believe she is the key to finding the Doctor, which Jim will surely try to do when he awakens."

"He's not the only one." She tapped the PADD she clutched with a nail, the small beat steady. Her colors were a shifting, muddled maroon, sounding like the ocean. "We can't let him do this, Spock," she whispered, leaning against the wall behind her and cutting her eyes towards the closed door. The Commodore's Yeoman had disappeared into her office and hadn't come out yet. "The records, he's throwing his career away."

Spock's expression stayed stoic, but he nodded. "His actions seem irrational, but he," he dropped his voice, and switched to Vulcan. Such a move would not fool a translator, but he already knew that there were no recording devices in this hallway. "I would propose that he is acting in response to factors we know nothing about. If he is truly as old as Khan, then he has been living under an alias and constructing different personas for centuries. His actions may have as much meaning to him as you would assign meaning to changing clothes."

Nyota's arched eyebrow was elegant and pointed. In the time they had known McCoy, there had been nothing about him to suggest that his feelings for the crew, and especially Jim Kirk, were anything less than fierce and loyal. He had always acted with the crew's interest in mind, even if his opinions ran counter to Spock's. 

"I agree, the idea does not fit the facts," he said in response to her unspoken comment. 

Both fell quiet when Yeoman Chambers appeared, gesturing for them both to follow.

Commodore- soon to be Rear Admiral- Darnell's office had been cleared of debris, though the walls and windows had yet to be repaired. Broken picture frames, pictures still inside, had been placed on broken shelves in defiance of the earlier chaos. 

As for the Commodore, herself, she was sitting behind her desk, wearing a dirtside uniform and staring in the middle distance. Her mouth was held in a thin, grim line, and the warm purples and blues guttered out in a cold winter wind. 

Spock realized that the sensation gnawing on his gut was fear. He had known the Commodore since childhood. All of his assumptions were inaccurate. Indeed, even while he had found McCoy's behavior peculiar, Occram's razor had made it far more likely that McCoy was hiding a far less... dangerous secrets. 

The woman in front of him shared the genes of a brutal dictator and a superhuman doctor. He had seen firsthand what her sires were capable of doing-

And then she quirked a smile at him, and Spock saw his Aunt again.

"Should have known you'd try to pin me down, boy," she said, and gestured for both Nyota and himself to sit. They did so, and Spock found himself perching on the edge of the chair with his back straight, and Nyota clenched her hands together in her lap.

Spock opened his mouth, then shut it. Took a deep breath-

"We're here because Doctor McCoy seems hell-bent on destroying his career, and we want to stop him," Nyota cut in. She held out her PADD, which the Rear Admiral took. "He altered his records to add several citations for drinking while on duty, insubordination towards a superior officer, dereliction of duty- even instances of _malpractice_." Nyota's lips pursed in distaste. "Any of these would ruin a career."

"I think that is the point," Darnell said, not bothering to look at the PADD, putting it down on her desk. "He does drink on the job, doesn't he? And you can't tell me he hasn't mouthed off to Kirk more than a few times, or anyone else who disagrees with him." She snorted at Spock as he narrowed his eyes. "And I would dare say that bringing _anyone_ back from the dead through genetic manipulation counts as malpractice." She paused, gaze drifting up to the pictures of her grandchildren. "Even in this day and age."

"Doctor McCoy has been a sterling example of an officer," Spock answered, stilted. Her words had echoed his observations of the Doctor. Observations that had come after his initial impression of insubordinate, drunken, emotional instability. An impression that had, apparently, been carefully cultivated and staged. Spock wondered why he had been so easily fooled. "And is someone that the entire crew trusts. His loss would be damaging to their morale."

"I don't see why I should lose one of the best scapegoats I have, son," Darnell answered, grabbing a stylus to tap on her desk. "Kirk entered sovereign Klingon space in order to carry out an illegal mission. He then made a stupid ass decision to try to capture Khan and wound up killing a Klingon patrol along with half of his away team, and a hell of a lot of other good people got dead when Marcus decided to clean up loose ends. Then this whole shit storm was thrown in my lap." She ran her hands over her face. "McCoy is offering me a way to keep Kirk from being handed over to the Klingons when they get their heads out of their asses and realize what happened to that patrol. I want to toss Marcus at them, but he's too well connected and too high up the food chain. If I can keep him from being reinstated, it will be a goddamn miracle."

 

Spock opened his mouth.

"It's politics, Spock. Marcus was head of Starfleet for decades. Not to say I won't do my damnedest to stop him, but this... this is one hell of a monkey wrench." She pressed her lips together. "I don't know if we can stop the war now, Spock. Marcus has been agitating for it, using every single tragedy in the past thirty years as an excuse for more militarization, for more weapon stockpiling." She took a long, shuddering breath and looked out the window. "Marcus may have spun this web but he's also got more leadership experience than anyone left in our command structure." She tried to laugh. "Except for me, and I've been two days away from retirement for five years now." 

"The Destroyer class ship is still a wreck in San Francisco Bay," Nyota said. "And we have video and audio records of his attack on a Federation ship, and he gave the original, illegal orders. We know he employed a group of criminals from the twentieth century. I don't see how..."

"People are scared. The original Narada incident? It showed the Federation there are nightmares out there we can't imagine. We've been trying to make leaps forward ever since. Marcus is a ruthless son of a bitch, but he was a smart son of a bitch." She exhaled, and tried to laugh again. "Do you realize that the Federation has faced almost no major conflicts since its inception? I can almost understand why Marcus woke that monster up. There's only one other person who knows anything about full-scale war..." She smiled again, more a baring of teeth. "I almost wonder what would have happened if Marcus _had_ found him."

Spock shook his head. "McCoy has said that would have been a calamity. He would not have been able to construct and design weapons for Marcus."

"Dad, unlike Khan, lived through World War III, and the hell that followed." She exhaled. "He tried to bring order after the rise of the MegaCities. He walked in the blood, and the muck, and did not make himself a dictator even when people tried to force it on him. I could hope he would have brought Marcus to sense... but you're right, he probably couldn't." She took a deep breath. "Damn it. Kids, really. Why are you here?"

"Is there no other way? McCoy loses his career, and becomes someone else, or Kirk is turned over to the Klingons?" Spock asked. "That seems illogical."

"What else can I do? Dad's smoke screen is weak, I agree, but dying didn't absolve Kirk of anything. He murdered that patrol. He _will_ be relieved of command as soon as he wakes up. The best I can do for him is keep him out of prison. I shouldn't even do that. Kirk was a dupe, but he was a willing one." She laughed again, but this time it mixed with a sob. "But Dad- he's willing to do this. Congratulations, you damn fool," she said, and Spock realized she was talking to the absent James Kirk, "You killed Leonard McCoy."

Spock and Nyota exchanged a look. Nyota offered two fingers to him, and Spock brushed his against hers.

"We are not going to allow that to happen."

~*~*~*~*~

Hazel eyes fluttered open and shut, stirred out of sleep by the wash of light and shadow over her face. The kiss of wind through leaves sang in counterpoint to a brass wind chime, and the air smelled of baking biscuits.

There was nothing dangerous, nothing threatening, but it was so different from waking for the past fifteen years that Samantha Grimm woke with stab of panic. Her blood pressure rocketed up, lungs gulping air, and she sat straight up to look around the room that she just didn't know-

For ten years she had lived at Olduvai research base on Mars. No wind, just the low hum of the air scrubbers and circulators, and almost no smell at all except for a faint tang of old sweat. There was no ecology to compete with those smells, and despite the best efforts of their environmental techs, nothing could completely scrub them away. 

Then the final, bloody culmination of the C-24 experiments had happened, and she had found herself back on earth. For two years afterwards she had been confined to a wheelchair, smelling blood mixed with rot as she pantomimed a normal existence as Khan's puppet and her brother's leash. 

Waking up and remembering that she could swing her legs over the side of the bed without effort, and to see a world that wasn't constantly monitored or controlled by someone who wanted to use her as a walking womb and just sitting back and enjoying a pointless, content moment-

Sam took a long, deep breath, and got to her feet, tilting her head as she listened for the other occupants of the house. 

High, childish voices came from below; she remembered being quartered on the second floor. Her brother had hurried through introductions, seeing her swaying in shock along with exhaustion as they had arrived at the old farm-style house. She had passed out soon after, mind a blur after the discovery of having slept for two hundred years, that the baby she clearly remembered was now an adult with grandchildren, that Khan was dead and she was safe...

Her feet padded over the tattered area rugs and hard wood as she eased her way down the narrow hallway, pausing to listen to the grandchildren and the older, more mature and calm rumble that she assumed was her brother. There had only been two adults there when she had arrived- their names were a blur- and they hadn't sounded anything like John. 

She didn't know this house at all. However, it did resemble, to a nostalgic and likely intentional degree, the house their uncle had in Georgia when she and John were kids. They had gone to stay with the man after their parents had died; the memories weren't exactly happy, but things had felt so much simpler then. 

The halls were lined with pictures. There was a woman who looked familiar, but was a stranger, along with the faces of her family. Samantha kept staring, eyes narrowed because there was a face that kept repeating, a face half-hidden by a graying goatee.

After a few moments, she realized the face she hadn't recognized was John's.

She fled down the stairs.

"Now, don't over knead it," a voice ordered in a syrupy drawl as she hit the first floor. She noted the direction and tried to decide what to do. Screwing up her courage, she headed towards it and found herself behind a door that lead to a kitchen.

_(Underneath it all there was a part of her that was so, so overjoyed because her back, her legs, she could feel them and they worked despite the time in the chair and she was free and she was whole and-)_

John stood beside the sink, holding a spatula, next to a ten year old girl in blue with brown hair and green eyes. The little girl's tongue was peeking out the side of her mouth in concentration as she stamped out biscuits with a round drinking glass. 

The scene was domestic, more peace than she knew what to do with. She quickly shut her eyes against the flash of memory, the pain of the gut shot through her lower abdomen and the anguish and making John promise to live for her...

"Hello, John," Sam called, and her brother paused before turning around. He smiled, blinking and tilting his head to the side in bemusement.

"Hello, Samantha," he said, and Sam stared. He was hunched over, shoulders bowed, despite the lack of age on his face. Once upon a time, he would have been leery, eying her with a mix of guilt and desperation. Once upon a time, the sight of him in the kitchen would have sent her laughing at the sheer absurdity of it, let alone carefully mentoring a child.

Once upon a time, she had thought she had understood her brother. He had been gentle, sensitive, had wanted to make the world a better place. They had completed each other's sentences, wore each other's clothes and were one word: Sam-and-Johnny, John-and-Sam. It didn't matter that their parents would mix up their names because there had been no difference between them. 

Up until the moment their parents had been killed in front of them.

_You saw it, right, Sam?_ he had whispered, as they had huddled together in the lab, reeling, as the adults puttered and scurried to try to retrieve their parents' bodies. _The face. The face in the dark._

She hadn't. But after that, nothing was quite the same. She thought he had been guilt-ridden and traumatized. Yet he had put on a mask, acted normal for her, and she thought he got over it. Then he had joined the marines and eviscerated his kind, gentle soul with his own hands.

With a lump in her throat, she realized that he had finally become the person he ought to be. Too bad that person was so old and so tired he didn't look like he could hold up the weight of his own bones anymore.

"Sam?" he asked, before frowning and taking a pan of scrambled eggs off the heat and placing them next to the other two cartons. "What's wrong?"

She dashed her hand across her face. "Nothing, John. I'm-" her voice cracked, "I'm perfectly all right."

That bemused expression crossed his face again as the little girl, noticing the tension, turned to both of them. "You don't _sound_ all right," she said clearly, and with the complete disregard for tact of the young. John cracked a smile before shooing her away.

"You've got every right to a break down, Sam," John said. "Putting it off won't help." 

"I don't break down, John." That weird expression crossed his face again. "And why do you keep making that face?"

"What face?" he said, even as he made it. Bemused, a little distant. 

"That one." She nodded at him, focusing on something other than her own turmoil. "That face. You look like..."

He smiled and shrugged. "Just. Hearing you say my name. It feels odd, somehow."

"But isn't John your name?" she asked, and immediately felt foolish. Of course he had gone through numerous aliases. Of course he hadn't used John in a while. "Do you want me to call you something else?"

Her brother quickly shook his head. They hadn't had much time to talk. "I'm McCoy, Leonard McCoy, in public. At least for a little while longer." He scratched at the stubble on his cheek. "Was a Joe a couple of times, probably kept that one the longest. You can keep calling me John, though. You don't mean it as an insult."

"How about Papaw? I think you're pretty fond of that one," Sam responded lightly, remembering what every adult in the house had called John. She had thought the idea should be amusing, silly, to call the young face by an old name. 

Meanwhile, her stomach dropped to somewhere about her knees.

She was whole, she was well, and she was safe. Her brother had become the man she had wanted him to be. 

Yet, Sam didn't know him at all.

~*~*~*~*~

Waking up again had been a surprise.

Given that he had never expected to wake up again, and he was suddenly breathing, felt sore, exhausted, he _could feel_ his muscles that felt tied to the bed- Surprised was a damned understatement. 

Jim hadn't expected an afterlife. Life held enough hell, that he had just expected a big nothing. There was a vague hope of seeing Bones again, a vague wish that he might get to meet the father he had never known. Yet he honestly hadn't expected more.

He remembered _something_. But he wasn't sure exactly what it was- everything was cold, _clinging_ , he felt dirty- Voices in the dark. Whispers, reminders, _he was breathing_ -

Jim felt. Like a light in a dark room switched back on. Nothing else processed.

_Come on, Jim, fight it._

He had felt bereft, though, awakening to find Carol Marcus by his bedside, who had been tensely discussing things with Scotty. It wasn't the person he had expected at all. 

Frankly he was surprised to find them there. Neither was stupid, however, and were quick to inform him (after telling him the fate of the ship and his crew) that they had been taking shifts: Spock and Uhura had finished theirs a few hours ago and had gone out to do some business. Chekov and Sulu would be coming on in another hour or so.

"How?" There wasn't much else he could say, nothing else to encapsulate the sheer disbelief he felt. He was dead. Now he wasn't.

The silence in the room made his ears ring.

"Doctor McCoy brought you back."

"How?" Apparently being dead had turned him into a broken record. But- but Bones was alive. Somehow. The synthetic chromosome? Joy tried to drown him, before confusion poisoned the flood. "Where is he?"

"He's, well," Scotty stuttered, then shrugged when he glanced at Carol. She sighed and shrugged back. "We don't know. He disappeared right after you were sent here. We haven't seen since." Scotty gave Jim a tremulous little smile. "Just... well. He's a bit. He's a wee bit..."

"What Scotty is trying to say, Captain, is that it looks like Doctor McCoy went, um, in front of a panel. To take away his medical license. Because he used Khan's blood to resurrect you," Carol Marcus stuttered. "Then, well, he's probably going to be dishonorably discharged from Starfleet for, um, dereliction of duty, insubordination, and other things. So he couldn't be here."

Jim stared. "... what the hell?"

Both Scotty and Carol gave him pained smiles. "We feel the same way. We know that's not Doctor McCoy, but we both also feel, after recent events, that we really didn't know the doctor all that well." Scotty shifted in his seat. "I mean, I saw him shoot someone, Captain."

"That was-"

"John Grimm called the ship after you died, Captain," Carol whispered. "Said things, gave orders, things only Doctor McCoy would do or know. He was the one who brought you back. We don't know exactly what happened but he did it. But we know that Khan turned up dead. So... so things are weird, about Doctor McCoy. I saw the doctor fight Khan, and I saw him tear apart the torpedo with his bare hands..."

"And use Khan's blood as a serum to revive a dead man," Scotty added. "He, he, I don't know how far we want to dig, Captain." The chief engineer looked genuinely uncomfortable. "And you- what he did with you- I mean, I know he brought back Rover and that, well, this is just... This just seems too bizarre, Captain. Messing with matters of life and death. What he did, I'm happy you're alive but messing with someone's DNA just... just isn't natural."

Jim shuddered and closed his eyes. His mind flashed to the warp core, to seeing Spock's tears, to the relief that he wouldn't be leaving Bones behind... but it looked like Bones couldn't do it either. 

Here he was. He could feel air surging down to the bottom of his lungs and back again, his limbs felt like lead but that was probably from the medicine he was on- but Jim was alive, and so was Bones.

Pike had told him, once, that a no win scenario depended on how you defined winning. Bones had told him the risks of coming out as someone who had been genetically altered... and they looked remarkably similar to what happened when you were found out to have altered someone else. Yet he had done it anyways, risking discovery...

And Jim swallowed. 

At least he wouldn't be telling Joanna that her father was dead.

Somehow, that feeling didn't help when, a few moments later, Spock opened the door to his room and was followed by Commodore Darnell.

Commodore _Joanna_ Darnell.

Who was looking down at him with an impassive green-eyed stare that would have done Khan proud.

"Hello, Kirk," she said by way of greeting, after dismissing Carol and Scotty. "We have much to discuss."

To be continued

**Author's Note:**

> A few months back I ran into the idea of Reaper!Bones, and more or less developed a fan-crush on Karl Urban. Now I must resist the urge to try to string ALL of his fantasy-esque movies together. 
> 
> Most of this story will be vignette-style, filling in the gaps of where the movie STID would have changed. Post movie, the story will be more coherent. I hope you enjoy the story that is eating my brain right now.


End file.
